


Waking in the Lonely Dark

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Case Fic, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Homeward Bound: Werewolf Edition, Missing Persons, Possible Character Death, Sexual Content, Sorry Canada, The one where Hotch invades Canada, Urban Fantasy, Werewolf Biology, Werewolf Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-09-19 20:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 178,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9459851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: 'Agents Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid are the latest victims in a long line of what authorities are only now admitting could be serial abductions ranging back over a decade. Dubbing the abductor 'The Ghost', the only thing authorities seem to be able to agree on is this: no victims have yet been recovered.'For Aaron Hotchner, it was his worst fear come to life. Forced to work alongside Jason Gideon and the human members of the elite BAU, Aaron and what remained of his pack found themselves fighting against everything they'd ever stood for in order to bring their people home.For the missing agents, it was life shattering. Trapped almost four thousand miles away and forced into betrayal by their captors, a desperate flight into a deadly blizzard made them realize how precarious their grip on survival truly was. But that didn't matter. There was no giving up.It wasn't only their survival they were fighting for.





	1. Wolf Winter

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks to my amazing beta, Blythechild, who has helped me get the foundation of this complex tale into some sort of reasonable state.**
> 
> This is not a love story. Or it is, but not the traditional kind.
> 
> This is the kind of story where loving something more than you can possibly imagine won't stop that thing from being taken away, and these are the kinds of characters whose worldviews don't involve standing by and letting that happen.
> 
> Enjoy the journey.
> 
> [Blythe has also made me some STUNNING artwork for this fic--please go check it out! It has the PUPPIES and they're absolutely gorgeous! Spoilers for later in the fic! ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10896249)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc One: Chapter One to Three**
> 
>  
> 
>  

It wasn’t that she was _unhappy_ with her life, it was just that Emily Prentiss was of the firm belief that life was more than ticking off a series of checkboxes: learn to walk, learn not to bite people you shouldn’t, go to school, go to college, get a career, get a mate, puppies by forty with the right kinda wolf, retire, die politely without making a mess. Life done, excellent job you. And yet, here she was. Sitting at a high school reunion in a dress that said nothing about her, telling absolutely no one about her life to avoid their judgemental eyes. Tick-box labelled ‘dreg up the past for impractical validation’: checked.

“I’m just saying,” slurred the drunken—Annabelle? Jocelyn? —woman, leaning heavily on Emily’s shoulder as though she’d forgotten the years between them and the inherent awkwardness of coming to a high school reunion. “You were always the best at what you did and, you know, some guys _dig_ that thing.”

“That thing?” Emily asked dryly, tracing her finger around the rim of her sticky cocktail glass and half-heartedly hoping that her phone would buzz with a cheery _oops got to go, someone’s being murdered horribly_ text. Anything to save her from Mrs. Two-Point-Five-Kids and Mr. White-Picket-Fence at her side.

Emily _despised_ mediocrity.

“You know,” the woman said, leaning in close as though the crowds of people around them gave a single fuck about this mind-numbingly boring conversation. _Carly._ That was it. Carly Buck-teeth, and she’d once thrown eggs at Emily’s locker “That _thing_.”

Oh.

_That_ thing.

Emily had forgotten how much _that_ thing had bothered them all back then.

“Oh yeah,” Emily said, smiling with all of her teeth and a shade too much gum. “You mean the werewolf thing? Well sure, shit, I should date a guy who fetishizes a fundamental part of who I am. That’s sounds _great_.”

Carly swallowed, eyes widening, and Emily smirked.

Later that night, her cell buzzed with an expected text—and Emily felt a little bit guilty for wanting it now it was here—but it turned out to be more pleasant then she’d first assumed when the vibration had kicked up in her handbag.

**> From Bossman: _Having fun?_**

The jolt in her gut had nothing to do with the outside chill of the dying winter or the sight of his name on the cell phone screen. It had nothing to do with her flirting with mediocrity with a man she had no reason to be testing those waters with. It maybe had a little to do with his cautious smile—a little sweet and a lot hidden—or possibly it was his infuriatingly perpetual professionalism, even when he was making her an offer that would see them both in the doghouse down at HR.

**To Bossman: _It’s stupendous. I can’t believe you wouldn’t come with me. I’m wearing a dress and everything. Knees galore. <_**

**> From Bossman: _I do like knees. And I knew you’d hate it. Would you like to run instead?_**

“Emily? Are you listening?” Carly was drunk and stupid, eyebrows furrowed together. Emily looked up at her remembering, suddenly, the dead rabbit they’d shoved under her windshield wiper when she was sixteen. “I was just saying—”

Emily got up and walked—stumbled—away. Away from the bar and the people she didn’t care about, tapping at her cell as the door swung open and a blast of unsympathetic air slammed into her unprotected skin and face. It was, for a moment, brisk. A shocking reminder of an oncoming threat of snow. She tipped her mouth up to the sky, shivered once, and felt the chill melt instead into a slow, pleasing sensation of pressure against her body.

Cold was nothing to the wolf.

**> To Bossman: _Sure. If you can catch me ; )_**

The chase was half the fun, after all, even with a man who was all suits and hands and regulations. She kicked her shoes off and darted across the damp surface of the parking lot with feet that burned from the frost until she found her car. The lock beeped open automatically as it registered the microchip in the dog-tag around her neck, an alteration she’d finally conceded to after the first time she’d been trapped as a wolf outside a locked car containing her pants and gun. She considered her next step as she leapt inside and dragged the door shut behind her, foot tapping on the carpet. The car would be fine here overnight. There was a gate into the green grid nearby. The air was cold, her blood was up, and if she timed this right…

Well, never let it be said that she was _mature._

Thanking whoever had invented tinted windows, she shucked her dress gleefully and shifted, bare to the world for a second with nothing on but the chain and its clinking tags. The cold ebbed, the world changed with her fluctuating eyesight, and she yawned and stretched with claws catching on the fabric of the seat cover. _Great,_ she thought, looking down and wrinkling her muzzle with distaste. _Fur everywhere again._

Technically, _technically¸_ shifting outside of the green grid was discouraged. But if she drove all the way there to make use of the changing rooms supplied, she couldn’t do _this_ : nose to the button on the inner handle, the door sprung open to allow her to bound out using her shoulder to nudge it shut behind her. Carly stepped out of the bar, laughing and tugging her coat on over her too-short cocktail dress. Emily dropped low and wiggled her haunches. _This is for the rabbit_ , she thought wryly, and leapt forward to hurtle past them as a blur of black fur and muscle. Carly shrieked as she stumbled back, and Emily bounded down the street with a cheerful _awoof!_

_Real mature, lady,_ another shifter out of sight nearby scolded. Emily howled in reply and ran faster, disliking the heavy impact of paws on cold cement but _vividly_ alive with the power and speed this form allowed her. People stepped back warily as she raced past, but tonight, drunk and wild, she didn’t really care. A great black wolf was an intimidating sight, especially with the bulk her winter coat gave her. They didn’t know _her_ , the her that was under the fur coat, and that was a kind of euphoric freedom.

Distantly, a pack thought reached her. Not words—the sender was far too distant for distinct words or even a sense of who the speaker was—but it had to be someone with whom she was intimately acquainted with for her to even be able to get the curious sensation at all: a whisper of feeling only translatable as: _where are you?_

A gate yawned across a moderately busy crosswalk. She skidded to a stop, wagged her tail at a startled schoolgirl in a bright orange parka leaning on the button, and sent back a playful: _running_. The walk indication clicked overhead— _tick tick tick tick_ —the cars hummed past, the people stamped their feet, and Emily shook her coat out and ignored them all. She sent another feeling, this one private and only because she knew exactly who was on the other end: _come find me_ with a longing heat behind it. _Want you_. Across the road, buildings vanished and trees yawned behind a chain-link fence overgrown with barely restrained creeping vines.

_District of Columbia Green Grid: in collaboration with the United Persons Authority_. The sign repeated every block, solid black against a white background with a list of rules below and written in thick, heavy lettering that even canid eyes could discern. Emily crossed the road as the _tick tick_ became a _tickticktickticktick_ and bared her teeth at the new signs, replaced every few months as protestors ruined the old ones.

_No pack activity_

_No hunting_

_No pets_

_No loitering_

_Registration **mandatory** for access to Green Grid therianthropic services_

Around her neck, the chain clicked accusingly. Four tags: one to unlock her home, one for her car, one with medical and emergency contact details. And, most hated, one with a sharply inscribed **EEPren509399:094** , rimmed in grey rubber with the FBI insignia stamped on the back. _Federal dog_ that tag covertly pronounced, _moderately dangerous. Do not pet. Working animal._ She huffed angrily at the implication, and nudged the clack gate open to feel grass and dirt under her paws rather than cement and salt from the icy roads.

Good mood gone at the reminder, she sped into the woods at a speed she wouldn’t be able to keep up, feeling her muscles burn and stretch and burn again as she pushed herself to the limit and beyond. One tenth of a mile in width and stretching across DC in a wide lattice of twenty-five intersecting routes, the green grids were a governmental concession to those therianthropes living within the city and suburbs who moved on paw or hoof rather than foot. Some attempt to obscure the tightening of their fundamental human rights by saying, _but look, we wrote off valuable developmental land in order to give you people some pretty trees._

_Annoyed_ , came the emotion from behind her, moving quickly onto her trail. A feeling now instead of an idea, and a hint of person behind that feeling. Her tail waved, her whiskers twitching with interest and paws kicking up in a feisty kind of excitement as her body recognised him seconds before her brain caught up. Male. Grumpy. Anal retentive. It was a mind-voice that sounded at home wearing a suit, even when wearing a fur coat instead. And it changed abruptly as he caught her scent on the damp wind: _eager, focused, pleased_.

She was being hunted now.

She ran because that was the game. The winter was closing around them and it wasn’t just her blood stirring and calling her to _turn back, go to him_. He howled once, low and provoking, and it was a huffing call designed to catch only _her_ attention. It made her feel soft and warm inside, the wolf-y part of her brain purring and coaxing her to lay down and open herself to him, to that rough masculine song. It was a far cry from the shy offer he’d made her three months before, expressing his interest with a barely concealed flush to his cheeks and the clear expectation of rejection in the set of his shoulders. _This is unprofessional and thoughtless_ , he’d said, swallowing hard. _I’m in a position of power over you as your superior officer. If you feel at all trapped or uncomfortable, I’ve failed in my duty of care to you…_

_Are you asking me out?_ she’d responded, choking back a laugh. He was just so _reserved._ She doubted he’d ever given in to the ‘throes of passion’, despite having a werewolf son who was absolute proof that he’d allowed himself at least once to do exactly that. _Why now?_

_I don’t want the… season… to influence your answer,_ he’d replied after a moment, and her body had immediately heated at the implication. Unprofessional or not, she’d immediately pictured his hands on her in every way and by the increasing stiffness of his stance, he’d done exactly the same. The date was fine, they hadn’t slept together, and he’d held the door open for her despite her rolling her eyes at the act.

The next date was better.

On the third, she’d taken him home and found out exactly what laid beneath those careful suits and practised expressions. But they were human still. Two people finding comfort in each other, on the possible cusp of more.

Tonight, he caught her. Broad-chested and taller than her by almost a head, his fur as black as her own but marked with splashes of white on his muzzle and chest and bearing a grey mask around his dark eyes. She heard the padding of paws heavy on the peat-soil behind her as the trees flashed by; heard his panting breath and a low warm growl. In response, she howled and hurtled forward as he ran by her side, their shoulders brushing together. Every touch sent a thrill zipping down her spine, their tails teasing. He caught her again, nipping at her flanks. Despite the season still being a month away from hitting them both, she knew her brain was busy flooding her body with every chemical it had at its advantage to coax her into _more_. She couldn’t name them all. Reid could, no doubt, but he was probably out under the same yellow moon playing the same timeless game with a faceless stranger. In these months, most did. Even the reclusive ones.

Except, for her, this year was different. Every previous season she’d taken part in, she’d simply found strangers. Pleasing howls. Friendly faces. Wolves she could stand and trust. But Hotch wasn’t a stranger. And spending the whole season with the one wolf…

That was a commitment.

_I don’t want the season to influence your answer,_ he’d said, and then he’d introduced her to his son as his potential mate, not just another pack wolf. Wooed her. Taken her on dates and wordlessly expressed that she was beautiful and desirable with his body and his actions. He chased her tonight because the winter drove them, but there was something else below the wanton hunt.

Tonight, they were wolves and their minds curled together as their surroundings became recognizable and sparse, turning from the unfamiliar runways of the green to the thin woods that ran behind the home he shared with his son. She tasted his excitement in his scent and in his mind, and she tasted the something else below it. A deep craving that wasn’t just for her body, despite the way it called for him, but for everything else she could offer as well, and everything he wanted to give her.

_Home; family; love._

Mediocrity, maybe, but a tempting mediocrity.

She gasped at that touch, whirling on the spot. Her paws kicked up loose earth and the air became thick with the smells of the land. Pines dry with the cold winter air. A passing deer, its trail murky with fear. A distant hint of Hotch’s home; the even more distant tang of JJ and Will on the wind nearby. And, then, he was there: large and male and dancing with her, muzzles brushing together as they moved together and away. On two legs and four, chests heaving and his tail curving high over his spine as hers curled to the side.

They could speak. They were close enough.

They didn’t.

A wordless _come here_ from him, lined with longing, and she whined and arched her throat. His muzzle was soft as he nuzzled against that offered vulnerability, leaning heavily on her side. The weight was foreboding, but she hummed under it and followed him as slid off and padded towards the gate behind his home. Around his neck, the chain of his own tags stood out vividly against the black and the moon cast silver highlights in his fur. Shadowy eyes flickered back to her as he nudged the gate open— _clack_ —and made a soft _woo_ noise deep in his throat. A strange noise. An intimate noise.

She slipped through after him, crossing a silent midnight road and through the open gate into his darkened yard. The door unlocked with an electronic _thunk_ , the handle giving way to large paws as he reared and pressed down on it. Inside, the home was silent, alive with scent, empty except for them as though this night was made only for two.

Claws clicked on the tiles; they were wordless still. The door thumped shut behind her and he turned with a spurt of ferocious speed, pressing his muzzle to hers and breathing in keenly. She pressed back, eager and shaking, her hind legs slipping out beneath her with a combination of her brain whispering _yes_ and the shitty grip her paws had on the slick surface. It was a wolf-y hug and his heart was beating powerfully against her side as she nestled under his chest.

She gave in first, shifting. Human and cold on the kitchen floor, her bare legs chilled instantly but her back and side warmed by the touch of his fur. With a hiss, she unfolded her legs and reclined back with one arm propping her up. She knew she was exposed and open; she knew this was it. The fur against her vanished as he shifted too, suddenly human with light casting outlandish patterns on fluctuating skin and fur. Still overtop her, still a heavy weight; he was on and in her in a heartbeat and she cried out with the moment as he worked her open with steady sways of his hips. Lips against her collarbone and breath hot; neither could find their voices as the wolves gripped their minds and pressed them onward.

It was raw, animalistic, but still he kissed her as she shivered through a tense release. Both already on edge from the chase and the hunt, he followed her with a moan and a soft _oh_ that was surprised and pleased and satisfied all at once. His eyes shuttered and mouth turned up into a shy smile as he added to the mess they’d made on the foggy tiles.

“Gorgeous,” he whispered, as he tugged her up from the floor. _Stunning_ , he’d whisper again as they’d stumbled halfway to the bedroom and ended up making out against a doorframe like bawdy teenagers.

_Oh god, Emily, EmilyEmily_ , he’d moan, as he’d take her again and again; she’d mangle some reply and think of nothing at all, really, except the fingers tracing lines of heat across her skin. At some point during that night, she’d wondered if there wasn’t something to this. Something offered. Something to gain.

They’d sleep tangled together and, in the morning, they’d do it all over again. And again, as winter waned and something within them whispered _more_. Any chance they had, they’d repeat the dance. Everything within them begged for it. A yearning emptiness that only reared its head as the snow and ice melted, reminding them that they were _less._

_Half._

_Checkboxes left unchecked._

Spring approached, and their wolves drove them.


	2. Summer Stray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was under her, barely awake and responding anyway as she chased away the last of the lingering heat with his body and her hands. Sleepy palms skimmed her bare sides, heavy eyes traced her movements, a slow, heady smile curled around his mouth. She rolled with him and over him until they were both spent once more, and then left him dozing in the warm furrow on the clean side of the bed. Showering was a reluctant act. Sweat was a pleasant smell to her, especially the clean, fresh sweat of a pack member. _Healthy, strong, virile,_ were all detectable in that odour, the notes marred by her own musky scent.

It might also have been a little of her brain conspiring against her and goading her into keeping the marks of their activities on her skin. Just to spite the pesky wolf, she heated the shower and scrubbed with unscented body wash, luxuriating in the twin indulgences of water soothing overworked muscles and the deep-seated ache between her legs.

Midway, she became suddenly aware of an itch. It was at the back of her brain; an anxious, clawing notion of worry that tried to shrink away and become insignificant as she turned her attention towards it. Intent on it now that she’d noticed it, she turned the taps to off and padded from the stall with her skin steaming in the cold air and leaving a trail of water behind her.

She dried quickly and clumsily to save Hotch’s carpets, before slinking naked from the bathroom without bothering to dress. The bedroom was silent. Hotch was curled into the tussled bedcovers, one hand partially covering his mouth and his side moving sedately. Deeply asleep and positioned like a wolf, she eyed the bare lines of his legs and ass appreciatively before moving reluctantly from the room that still smelled of sex.

It wasn’t Hotch worrying. It didn’t feel like a pack thought. It was _just_ slightly removed from a pack thought.

She knew instantly who it was.

Spencer Reid.

Hair damp on her shoulders and water still patterning the parts of her skin she’d neglected in her hasty rub down, she moved silently down the stairs as a human and through the hall to the kitchen. The door could be opened by paws or noses, the security system keyed to the necklace around Hotch’s neck, but it was easier undone by hands and left propped delicately open as she stepped out into the frosty dawn and took on fur instead of goose-pimpled skin.

The worry was louder as a wolf, and she could trace it easily. A familiar mind drawing her in. Veiling herself from his mind, she darted across the road and through the gate, moving upwind of the overpass where she was sure he was lurking. It yawned across the green, solid cement with locked rooms inside controlling the water system for the thirsty trees and grass around them. To pass through, round tunnels large enough to move a loaded vehicle had been left. They were unlit, pitch black, and entirely unsettling. They were also one of the few parts of the green grid that inspired territorial battles among the usually exterritorial users of the verge. With low vision and closed in walls, not even the most sedate of cat shifts liked them.

She found the wolf hunkered above in the drainage pipe at the end, immediately obvious despite his oddly high perch. His fur was bright against the concrete as he saw her and slithered down with a heavy thump, making her wince for the health of his ankles. _Fulvous,_ he’d described his coat once, with a barking laugh at the face she’d pulled at the weird word. _Tawny brown. Dull._

She’d googled the colour. _Butterscotch_ , she’d determined finally, the only word that really captured the red-gold buff shade of his short pelt. _Much more flattering._

Today, that coat was a muddy brown, splattered with dirt and plastered to his sides. Wide, long ears slunk down against a narrow face, his white mask vivid against the grey cement at his back as he looked at her. She padded over, nuzzling his thin muzzle and taking the chance to scent as she greeted him.

_You smell like sex,_ she teased him. _Whore._

_Hypocrite_ , he retorted, wincing away from her touch. She poked her muzzle at him again, just to be contrary. There was blood on his shoulder. She licked at it, frowning and scenting a strange male, adrenaline, beery saliva. _I caught it on a tree._

_Liar_ , she thought, but didn’t let him hear. Reid was reclusive. It was remarkable enough that he was lurking this close to the grounds where the FBI wolves tended to pack together. Instead, she wryly asked: _flirt with someone you shouldn’t?_

To that, he didn’t reply. Just turned his skinny face away from her and busied himself with nipping muck out of the fur between his toes. She considered helping. Something about the oddly gangly creature, too thin, too lanky, too unproportioned, always sparked up protective instincts. He was shaped like a pup that had never grown out of its awkward stage, and it made the females cluck over him and the males refuse to take him seriously. If he ever deigned to join a pack, he’d be the one the rest fussed parentally over well after his muzzle had greyed. But, she’d tried to help him groom before and he’d baulked. It was an intimate act, restricted to family and pack, and he’d reminded her coolly that she was neither to him. The rejection had stung.

_Hunt?_ she asked, because fuck the rules and because he still smelled wired and snappish. Too young to be without a pack, she thought grimly. Mating season was rough on those new to it. It pushed and pushed and drove them half out of their minds with floods of conflicting desires and information. Females’ brains turned silly and single-minded, and the males forgot how to use their brains at all. Even the clever ones. Twenty-four years old, Spencer should have had his first two years previously. So far as she knew, he hadn’t.

Judging from the musky tinge of overwhelming _maleness_ colouring his usual sedate scent—books, coffee, the faintest whisper of a summer sun—that had caught up with him with a vengeance, and he’d gotten reckless. She looked at his shoulder again and felt her muzzle curl.

_If we get caught,_ he replied, dropping his tawny front paw and lifting the other, a single white-socked one that she delighted over, _we’ll be written up for sure. And I know you can’t afford to lose any more demerits._

_We won’t get caught,_ she promised him, and sauntered a few frisking steps away. _Come on._

Hotch was a sleepy awareness to her north. She reached, pushing cheekily at his mind and whispering, _going for a run with Reid. Back soon. Have coffee ready._

At that, as she’d known he would, he snapped awake. Instantly alert and aggressively macho. She rolled her eyes, turning her body away from Reid so he couldn’t see the gesture. He’d follow. He always followed, in this weirdly reluctant friendship that they’d nonetheless come to treasure.

_What?_ Hotch returned, alarm flickering through his thoughts. _Why is he here? What’s he doing so close to my house? Emily—_

_Don’t be growly_ , she retorted, irritated already with the possessive tone. Not his fault. They were all on edge. Instead of defending her choice, she sent a short rush of sensations and thoughts: the tang of bloodied fur, the white-edged gleam to her friend’s eyes before he’d recognised her approach, the way he’d almost twitched out of his skin as she’d brushed against him. _I think someone roughed him up a bit. I’m going to push towards his apartment, see if someone is messing with him. He’s not here to put a bid in; he’s here because no one will fuck with him on lands that stink of you, Aaron._

Hotch was silent. _Want me to come?_ he sent finally, and his possessiveness was gone, replaced instead with a low anger. He didn’t like Reid, but he also didn’t like bullies.

_You show one whisker out here and he’ll piss-bolt away,_ she replied pertly. _You scare people._ Paws thudding in the dirt, breath white-fogged in front of her panting muzzle, she heard the quiet tread of Reid catching up. Hotch’s voice turned distant as they moved further away from him.

His reply was soft and almost indistinct. _I do not._ The words faded into emotions once more. A soft well of affection that was deeper than he’d show, and she shivered at the feeling of it pooling into her mind. Dangerously seductive, that kind of affection. The kind that could so easily become everything.

They found the spoor of two passing deer twenty minutes in, conveniently heading in the direction of the gate that would lead out to Reid’s home. Emily followed the trail unenthusiastically, not overly hungry and well aware that she’d never pull down a hale young buck with _Reid_ at her side. Kid was terrible at hunting. Fantastic tracker, awful hunter. A weird combination.

The frosty morning was making way for a heavily overcast day, the cloud-cover low and foreboding. Snow soon. That was pleasing. They hadn’t had any yet this year, and the first snowfall was one of the few times they risked the _no pack activity_ rule and gathered to celebrate it. Saturday yawned ahead, a weekend off the job if nothing went wrong. She shivered, feeling a thrum of interest work its way through her as she thought of Hotch home waiting. Her pace quickened, her blood with it, and she saw Reid glance at her and then away, ears flicking low.

_I might go home_ , he sent softly, despite the fact she could feel that just the act of stretching their bodies in a run was helping him relax. Any tension he’d lost was sneaking back, tinged with awkwardness as he scented her shift in focus. _You should go back to… Hotch._

It wasn’t jealousy. She knew jealously, knew how it flavoured every thought with a sour misery.

It was so much worse than simple jealousy. She shied away from it physically; away from the intense sensation of utter isolation that flooded his mind for a moment. _Loneliness triggers the same parts of the brain as physical pain_ , he’d told her once, and he was truly hurting now.

And she knew as soon as she left him hurting like this, he’d be slinking back to whatever coy bitch had taunted him with the something _more_ and then left him to face her family for the crime of being a packless wolf who’d dared to hope. Instincts were fecklessly cruel.

_Spence…_ she said, and stopped. Steam rose from their sweaty flanks, his tongue lolling. She pushed close, ignoring his growl of discomfort. Shoulder to shoulder in a touch that was affectionate— _don’t leave_ , that touch said—and she nipped at his bristly ruff. _Stop pushing us away._

Stiff-legged and with his hackles up, he tolerated her touch only because he liked her too much to snap. Hazel eyes stared her down with a cold, wild anger that was completely alien on his kind face. Despite herself, she almost twitched down at that look, her throat drying. Maybe she shouldn’t _quite_ be blaming the faceless woman solely for the unfortunate events of the night. A pretty wolf was a pretty wolf, and if she was young and giddy with the season, that look would have had her following him anywhere he decided to lead her.

_Are you going to pair bond with him?_ Reid asked suddenly, the look vanishing and becoming curious instead. Genuine interest. _Hotch, I mean. With… Hotch._

_Maybe,_ she replied, because he was her friend and he deserved some kind of answer. She toyed with asking how he knew about Hotch, but thought the answer would be some variation of _gossip._ She’d been Hotch’s second in command for far too long for people not to notice the way they orbited each other. _Possibly. I have commitment issues, you know that. And he has a son. And we’ve only been dating for a few months._

_You love his son,_ Reid retorted, his black-tipped tail flicking. The trees shifted around them. Rain began to fall, slow and fat, and she could smell ice in the air. Snowfall for sure. _And you love him. You have for a long time, Emily, not just the months you’ve been open about it. You’re just too stubborn to admit to it._

_Fuck you._ She snapped her jaws at him, paws dancing in the dirt. He joined in for a moment before withdrawing. The tension was back in his posture. She winced guiltily, scenting the rough shift in his scent as his instincts kicked in and narrow-mindedly reminded him that she was female and here and he was alone. _I’m happy with him. Love is a bit strong._

Reid looked at her oddly. _Why is being happy not a good enough reason on its own?_

She could corner him. Ask him why the rules worked for her but not for him. Point out that Hotch would allow him to join them, despite his original defection from their team, and that JJ would be overjoyed to have someone else to mother. Point out that _he_ could be happy too. But the moment flashed past too quickly; on the frigid air, a howl floated towards them. Loud and stupid and female, a coquettish, teasing call.

His head snapped around, ears perking up, and her heart sunk. At the very least, it was south of their position. Reid’s apartment was to the east. If he slunk away now, she could still chase off his friends from the night before. _Andrei Rublev is showing next week in its original Russian,_ she told him instead. _Come with me if you’re not working. You can show me how much you’ve learned since our last lesson._

_Okay,_ he agreed absently, focus lost. The howl came again. _Nothing serious_ , the howl sang of. _Chase the spring with me._ She could see his throat working as he ruthlessly fought down the desire to answer it with his own promises of a fleeting connection. _Em, I, um…_

_Go,_ she said tiredly, worn out by his exuberance already. She was only ten years older than him, but it felt like an eternity when he stood like this facing the world as though it was new. _Spence?_ He paused, one foot raised on the edge of a chase, and looked to her. She examined his markings, helplessly fond of this weird wolf and his weird ways. _If it gets too much, you can buy suppressants. Most younger wolves do, for their first few seasons. It’s too overwhelming otherwise._ Something his family should have taught him. Hers hadn’t, too busy and distant to bother, and the Prentiss family hadn’t had a pack. Impossible to form pack ties when moving constantly on Ambassadorial duties… hers hadn’t taught her, and she hadn’t been ready for it.

_I know_ , he replied, and if he was human right now he’d be blushing. _I have some, in case I get called into work. Thanks, Em…_

He bounded away with a vivid sense of _bye_ laced with friendship and disappointment that their time together was over, but she could sense the alteration in his priorities even in that feeling.

_Come to the snow meet if we have one,_ she called after him, but he didn’t reply. The female howled again. Emily listened with interest for a moment, but his call didn’t follow. If he chased her, he did so silently. Once bitten, twice shy. He’d announce his interest when he felt safe to do so.

On her way back to Hotch’s, she looped around the gates near Reid’s home. A single wolf padded away when he spotted her coming, his posture guilty. She followed, making sure he caught her scent on the wind—big, protective, angry, and, most of all, not alone. Her scent was laced with her pack and snarled _leave him alone_ despite the fact that she was a wordless shadow.

The stranger wouldn’t return here now that he knew she was lurking.

She slunk into Hotch’s house as a wolf and the air was flavoured with coffee. Shifting back, she found the pot and pressed her palm against it, distractedly thinking of the lonely pain in Reid’s thoughts and his silent misery. The drink was strong and bitter as she poured a mug, keeping it black, unsweetened, and heard the soft sound of Hotch approaching from behind. Shower-warm and clean, he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, hands folding protectively over her stomach. His head resting on her shoulder, lips kissing their way up her throat, she made a soft moan of appreciation and relaxed back into that embrace, feeling the blunt press of his renewed interest against her thigh.

“You smell like him,” he commented quietly, brushing his nose against her jaw where Reid had greeted her. His hands ghosted over her sides, gentle. Teeth nipped at her ear as he found the lobe. “I don’t like it.”

“You have control issues,” she replied flippantly, pushing the percolator and her mug to the side out of bumping reach and leaning forward onto the counter, tipping her hips up invitingly. Ready for him already and had been since she’d first caught his scent on the way home. A glance at him over her shoulder as he registered her offer, and he groaned deep in his chest and crowded against her from behind, rocking inside her with a move made clumsy by desire. A gasp slipped out, his hand tender as he steadied her to stop from bumping painfully into the counter at his push. “And, _ah_ , there. Is that better? All…” Eyes flickered shut as he thrust deep and stalled, staying inside her as he breathed against her throat. Locked together. “… all yours again.”

“Never,” he rumbled, and pulled her tighter against him. Kissing her throat, her jaw, her mouth when she finally craned her torso around painfully to meet his lips without him slipping out. “You’re your own wolf, Emily Prentiss. No doubt about that.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Maybe I don’t want to always be my own wolf,” she said, thinking of Reid’s loneliness and her hatred of mediocrity. Hotch would give anyone he loved the world if they asked it, but that didn’t automatically mean mundane. “Maybe I’m okay with being yours, sometimes… if you don’t mind me owning your ass in return.”

He was frozen behind her, half-panicked, half ferociously turned on. “Emily,” he breathed finally, brain catching up with the rest of him. “What are you asking?”

“When this season hits,” she clarified, pressing her palms flat against the countertop and feeling the returned heat pushing through her. A savage reminder that in less than a few weeks, they’d be repeating this frantic coupling but with a mindless animal need if they allowed it rather than this human commitment. The words were hard, the hardest she’d ever voiced, but they rang true: “I want us to be a pair. If you want that… if you want it, I’ll gladly join you.”

“Yes,” he breathed, and began to move again. Kissing her, his breathing ragged and voice hoarse. “Please, god, yes. I want that… so much, Emily.” She protested sharply as he pulled out and left her hollow, but he turned her with wide hands on her narrow hips and lifted her easily into a frenzied embrace where they clung with equal intensity.

“Back to bed,” she suggested, seeing the glazed hunger burning in his eyes and wanting to shift the moment away from any kind of overt declaration of commitment. “Then you can stop pretending you’re not trying to fuck his scent off of me.”

He laughed, shocked and appalled at her language, but as soon as she hit the mattress he proceeded to do exactly that. He marked her skin with his mouth where her shirt would hide it, and she marked him similarly; they gave in completely as the snow began to finally fall.


	3. Snowbound Sentiments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The temperature dropped dramatically as the afternoon darkened, turning the snow into fat, sticky snowflakes that piled onto tree branches and fence railings. Emily sipped at a mug of dark hot chocolate, relishing the bitter aftertaste. Hotch had pulled a face at the idea of the drink and poured coffee instead. Barefoot in loose clothes, he looked strangely approachable, like anyone’s father or lover.

The front door banged open and there was a wild whoop of enthusiasm and a clatter of small boots on the floorboards. Emily braced as a whirl of over-excited five-year old burst into the room, blonde hair damp with snow and face flushed. “Dad, snow!” he howled, leaping into the air with the absolute belief that his father would catch him before he slammed into the counter.

Hotch did, hands around his waist and boosting him up onto his hip. “Hello, Jack,” he said, brushing snow from his son’s shoulders. “We have a guest. Have you greeted her properly?” Jessica slipped into the room behind her nephew, smiling as Jack turned sheepishly.

“Hullo, Emily,” he said, hugging his dad shyly. “Did you see the snow?”

“I did,” she replied. His eyes tracked her hot chocolate curiously. “I heard you had a sleepover at your aunt’s. Was it fun?”

“I played Xbox with my cousins,” he said seriously, wriggling until Hotch let him down. Mouth open in a scenting expression, he was too young yet to know how to mask the move and quite plainly stalking her mug. Hotch quirked an eyebrow at his son as Emily tipped it down towards him.

“It’s not normal hot chocolate,” she warned. “It’s very bitter. Would you like to try anyway?”

A slow nod was her answer, creeping towards her with every limb held stiffly; the nervous walk of a wolf pup around an unfamiliar grown wolf. But she _was_ familiar, pack to him, and his reticence broke her heart. It was the accustomed wary regard of a pup who’d lost a parent, and Emily knew that it broke Hotch’s heart a little bit more every time he saw it. Pack or no pack, pups needed their parents. It was one of the reasons raising werewolf cubs was so damn _hard_. A litter tied parents together as effectively as a chain, helped along by a nice dose of really fucking powerful brain chemicals dedicated solely to the act of pair bonding. Their biology, as fascinating as it was, terrified her sometimes with how frighteningly efficient it could be in achieving its ends. A hollow throb in her core was reminder enough of that, as well as the way every sense seemed attuned to Hotch standing in front of her, even with her attention focused on Jack.

“Snow meet soon,” Hotch said as Emily knelt and held the mug so Jack could sip at the frothy top. “Are you coming, Jessica?” Jack pulled a _blargh_ face, backing away from the mug with his mouth open in distaste and Emily barely holding back a chuckle at his mortified expression.

“I don’t think so,” Jessica was replying, her tone wistful. “It’s below zero out there already—if it runs late, I don’t want the boys exposed to the weather for too long.” She ruffled Jack’s hair with a wry smile. “Not all of us have the benefit of fur coats, I’m afraid, Jackie. Speaking of, I should get back to them. Ken will likely be wanting to go to the meet if he can—and the boys will put up a fuss if they think they’re being left out.”

Emily slipped back to the kitchen as Hotch bid his sister-in-law goodbye, a strange, tight feeling twisting through her at this open reminder of Haley’s impact on his life. Another thing to consider.

Watching through the door as Jack bounded up the stairs to his room to put his bag away, she rather thought that maybe, just maybe, it didn’t really need all that much considering. There was a spreading warmth in her chest at the sight of the boy that was pervading and more than just _pack_. A warmth that was more than just her stupid brain pushing her to care for the motherless pup, she was sure. _Maybe_ it had a little to do with him being the only pup in their pack… maybe.

Likely.

“Stupid brain,” she muttered, and glanced out the window. Snow was drifting slowly now, falling like feathers caught on the still air, and she very suddenly wanted to _run_.

Outside, a wolf howled.

A hand touched hers, sliding around her elbow. Hotch crept up behind to curl around her back, his own gaze on the snow outside as well. “You know,” he murmured, kissing her hair as he spoke, “these gatherings are technically illegal. They count as a pack activity. As upstanding citizens, we really should abstain.”

“Fuck being upstanding,” she hissed, turning in his grip to find his mouth. “These are part of who we are, Aaron. We celebrate the snow. Turn the agent off for tonight.”

“Grandma says the snow brings puppies,” Jack said brightly. They broke apart, looking down at him. “And that’s why we say hello to it, so the puppies don’t get sad. Can we go look now?”

Another wolf howled, joined by one more in a duet of joy that lingered on the white-flecked air. Emily shivered again, before tugging out of Hotch’s grip and dragging her shirt over her head. “Yes!” she cried with a laugh, “Come on!”

Hotch laughed, a rare enough sound that she smiled to hear it. By the time she’d slipped out of her pants and shifted, he’d helped Jack undress. The boy wriggled and leapt and squeaked with excitement until finally shifting in mid-air into a golden-brown pup with gangly legs and tufty fur and skittering helplessly on the tiles as he landed.

“Slow,” Hotch scolded, using his foot to scoot his son along the floor, the boy’s tail wagging frantically. “The night won’t run away without you.”

_By my side, Jack,_ Emily coaxed, taking over from Hotch to prop the boy up with her muzzle, breathing in his new puppy scent that he hadn’t quite yet lost. Milky and clean and bright, she couldn’t help but wave her own tail back at his jubilation as a swelling sensation of _love_ burned in her chest. _Come on. Plenty of time to fall when the snow is there to catch you!_

_But I’ll get my paws wet,_ Jack observed, managing to finally skitter through the back door as his dad held it open with one hand, losing his pants with the other. Emily bounded past, sending the thin layer of new snow flurrying around them. _Oh! It’s cold!_

_Very,_ Hotch replied, a wolf now. The door locked behind them, and they flanked their charge as they crossed the yard to the gate. _Stay close. Don’t wander off._

Jack nodded, already distracted. Snapping at snowflakes, his paws twirling in the snow, he wanted to see it all and do it all and be everywhere at once. Emily gave in after five minutes of trotting through the green at the pup’s frantic pace, finally joining him in a frisking, wild dance of _fun_ , leaving Hotch to bring up the rear sedately. She felt his eyes on her as they began to cross over wolves’ trails. They were close to the centre, where a clearing denoted their hurried gathering place when their traditions pushed them to risk the restrictions.

_What?_ she asked hotly, knocking a tree just to hear Jack squeal with laughter as the snow dumped onto his fur. It still fell around them, piling lightly on their thickly insulated coats and dripping off as their body heat warmed it. Jack had snow on his ears, his lashes white and paws dark with wet. Hotch had a bare dusting on his back, as though even the snow didn’t dare mar his cool demeanour.

_Nothing,_ Hotch lied, voice soft. She left Jack to a game of his own devising that seemed to involve diving into every bush and rattling it about, and padded back to her partner to bump their shoulders together. Pressing her muzzle to his and their sides together, she crooned softly deep in her throat and felt him shiver and melt against her. _That’s cheating. Don’t do that. That’s an odd feeling._

_Woozy,_ she supplied, making the noise again. Payback for him turning his own vocalizations against her. _Now you know how I feel when you’re being nuzzly. Why are you watching me?_

_Because you’re stunning,_ he replied simply, and bumped his nose against hers when she turned to stare at him with shocked delight at the truth in his mind. He absolutely believed that, and the feeling was _ecstatic. And you’re mine. Two very good reasons to stare._ Whatever reply she might have managed she was saved from supplying by a greeting bark and a large salt-and-peppered wolf plunging out of the undergrowth to slam into Hotch’s side. Hotch barely swayed, keeping his feet with a sigh and a weary: _hello, Dave._

_Morning, nerds!_ Rossi howled, turning to greet Jack with a happy patter of huge greyed paws. _Morning, tiny Hotch! I’ve been here **ages**. You’re late._

_You’re over-enthusiastic,_ Emily grumbled, nudging her shoulder against him in greeting and trotting past to join the clearing. As the tree-line broke around them, the green opened into a snowy space littered with wolves and humans mingling. Mostly wolves; almost two dozen compared to the bare ten humans. It was damn cold to be without a coat out here, and those born into werewolf families without the ability to shift were huddled down into thick parkas and hoods if they’d risked the weather at all. _Where’s JJ?_

_Here,_ JJ said, padding over to nose at Jack happily. Well used to his minor celebrity status, Jack withstood the affection with only a hint of impatience slipping through the careful politeness Hotch had instilled in him. _Hello, everyone. We can’t stay long. I want Henry home before dark, but we didn’t want him to miss greeting the snowfall._

Across the clearing, Henry waved from his daddy’s arms. In human form to hold his son away from the icy ground, Will waved too. Both were dressed for the cold, a blanket around their shoulders. Other children were similarly held by a human-formed parent or two. As they slipped further into the cheerful chatter of festivities, coats of every colour and length mingling together, all eyes turned to look at Jack with a lingering mix of sadness and jealously and optimism.

If Emily looked for it, she could see wolves pressing tighter together as they passed with the pup bouncing ahead. Paired wolves, or almost paired, leaning closer with longing at the reminder of what the season ahead was about. Emily wondered if their small little area pack would see more pups this year.

_Doubt it,_ JJ said quietly, catching the soft thought. _After Hotch lost Haley… no one really wants to risk it. I didn’t._ She shook out her white-gold fur, blue eyes lingering on her human son in his dad’s arms. _It’s just too dangerous, Em. Would you?_

No. Not even for Hotch.

_Poor Jack,_ she commented instead of answering. _I think he believes pups come with the snow. He’s been checking under every bush for any that have gotten tangled in the branches._

_Oh my,_ JJ giggled, her mouth opening in a doggy grin. The humour vanished as she thought through the implications, ears flattening back against her narrow skull. _Oh… poor thing. He must be so lonely…_

Emily watched Jack frisking through the clearing, his golden fur starkly visible against the grey-white snow and the drabber coats of the adult wolves. Every wolf turned to him, even simply to look and reassure themselves that he was healthy and whole, and most greeted him by name. He didn’t seem lonely. Not really. Emily suspected he didn’t know enough about the world to be sure he was different yet.

But he would one day, and that broke her heart.

_Do you ever regret having Henry human?_ she asked JJ suddenly, probably rudely, but it was a question that burned. She always wondered about the processes behind that choice: to bear a single werewolf litter, restricted by the season and the exhaustive damage a litter inflicted on a mother’s body; or to have human children and always wonder if they were… _Do you feel like he’s…?_

_Less?_ JJ asked sharply, her eyes locked on Emily’s face. _No. Never. I feel like he’s lucky. Almost. This? What we have here?_ They both looked around, to the dancing wolves and the falling snow and the slow, nervous whisper of throats longing to howl as one. _This is a thing of the past, Em. It’s slipping away. And without packs, we’re nothing… I could never condemn him to that future._

_You make it sound like we’re dying out._ Emily didn’t mean for her voice to sound so harsh. Behind her, she felt a push of _worrylovesupport_ from Hotch’s mind as he padded closer and sensed her distress. _Jesus, JJ. Fatalistic much?_ But, even as Emily said it, she felt another familiar mind slink nearby. A wolf on the outskirts. JJ’s gaze followed hers, as they both looked to the shadowed shape of Reid lingering just behind the trees. JJ’s hackles lifted, her eyes darting to Henry nearby. The wary distrust of any parent around a strange wolf.

Reid saw the glance. He was looking right at them, almost longingly. And he dropped back, slinking away. Gone in a second, like he’d never been there at all.

_He could be one of us if you’d let him,_ Emily murmured, not bothering to aim her voice at JJ alone. Other wolves glanced at her and glanced at the empty bushes where he’d stood. Some growled. Some merely huffed.

_He’s not,_ Hotch said severely, his own fur stiff.

JJ’s reply was sad. _But then, he made his choice, didn’t he?_

Later that night, they lay together—Hotch and Emily with Jack asleep between his dad’s great paws, not even waking to the wolves who risked Hotch’s warning growls and tried to creep closer to farewell the snoozing pup. Watching the wolves break apart and slip into the darkness to their own homes, Emily wondered if they were all going to end up like Reid in the end.

Alone.

Maybe that morose feeling would have lingered beyond that moment if it wasn’t for a thin _beep_ emitting from the pager tag on Hotch’s necklace. Nothing but a small LED light and a thin speaker, it was a tinny warning that, somewhere, his phone was ringing. Work, for sure.

They quietly got to their feet, nudging Jack awake, and made their own way home. Time to be human.

_Goodnight_ , she wished the wolves who remained, Hotch echoing the sentiment. _Happy snowfall._

_Goodnight,_ the wolves chimed back, alive with the feeling of being pack. _We’ll run again._

_Goodnight,_ came one more whisper, small and private and just for her. _Don’t forget about Andrei Rublev next week._

He was still there. She smiled to herself and put JJ’s fears out of her mind.

Things _could_ change for the better.

 

* * *

 

The team looked about as happy as a bunch of agents dragged in from their Saturday nights could look. Emily flounced into the conference room with her head high and eyes gritty, ignoring the glum atmosphere. 

“Evening all,” she said, sliding into her seat next to JJ and beaming at the other woman. JJ, as always, beamed back. As perfectly presented as if they hadn’t been running about in the snow together barely five hours before. “Glad to see you’re all looking ready for a long night of… well, whatever Garcia is about to walk in here and give us.” Rossi chuckled at that, leaning back in his chair and flicking a pen in his hands.

There was something to be said about working with a team of werewolves, they were at least a little more ‘get up and go’ at three a.m. than their sister human team was. Which meant they got all the bullshit calls.

Hotch walked in, impeccably dressed in his suit and tie, and Emily caught a whiff of peat and forest and fought a cool shiver that danced up and down her spine and settled low in her belly. He’d rushed out while she’d stayed until Jessica had arrived to pick up the exhausted Jack, prepping for the briefing at work as the others still shook themselves awake.

“Our unsubs are werewolves,” he began. Garcia scuttled in behind and the stillness that settled onto the room was heavy and filled with dismay. “With that understanding, we’re going to be working with Agent Gideon’s team for this one. They’re being debriefed separately before meeting us at the jet.”

Emily swallowed. Agent Gideon was… intimidating to work with. And there was always the haunting feeling that the humans didn’t quite _trust_ them…

“Is Agent Reid with them?” Rossi asked, his chair-leg clonking onto the floor. Emily winced. Joy. Reid in close contact with Hotch at the moment was _exactly_ what they all needed. “And what exactly are we up against?”

“Yes, his expertise will be useful,” Hotch replied shortly. Emily saw JJ grimace at the carefully blank look on Hotch’s face. “Garcia?”

“Reports of disappearing wolves have been increasing at a steady rate over the past five years—” Garcia said all in one breath, the screen behind her lighting up. “Which most have assumed are just, ah…” She hesitated, the only human in a room full of werewolves and visibly uncomfortable with stating what was coming.

“Them going rogue,” Rossi finished. “Yeah, it happens. Once they cross the border into the North, we’ve got no jurisdiction on them. Most defect in mated pairs, no pups. No one wants to risk pups in the wilds without a pack…” He paused, flipping through the file. “These two match the profile of those most likely to leave. What makes this different?” Emily followed his example and opened her own file, finding a photo of two smiling faces beaming up at her. Clarissa and David Arnold. Married, no kids or pups, well-liked in the Ohio state pack and active members of their sub-pack…

“Because those who took them got sloppy,” Garcia said, looking away from the screen and swallowing as a grainy image popped up. “Camera footage from a neighbouring apartment feed in New York, three hours ago. Security saw this, sent it through to NYPD, who threw it to us when facial recog. brought these two up as Ohio wolves.”

“What are Ohioan wolves doing in New York?” Rossi asked, watching the screen as well as two people staggered into view, arms around each other. Two others flanked them, ignoring the clear possessive curl of David’s body around his wife’s. Emily watched with a wince as first Clarissa and then David staggered and fell, herded neatly into the alley and out of sight by the men with them. The whole thing took thirty seconds max, but it was clearly the tail end of an exhausting process. “No facial recog. on those men?”

“No one knows yet, and nope,” Garcia said, shaking her head with a clatter of the beads around her neck. “None. One witness reports hearing a howl, but only one and distant. The Arnolds didn’t call for help.”

“Why would they?” Emily asked, fingers tight around the file. “New York is a pack-free zone, same as DC. Family units only. No one was listening for them. They _were_ alone.” She thought of the pack gathering that night, so much smaller than what it used to be. A steady decline that began ten years ago and was only going to worsen.

The screen played again and detailed those last disoriented moments. Emily shivered suddenly, seeing something flicker across Hotch’s face as he glanced up at the screen and the isolated wolves being herded easily into danger. Something low and dark and, if the man wasn’t so damn composed, he’d have growled. She almost heard the phantom rumble of the noise in her chest.

“We’re meeting Agent Gideon’s people on the jet?” Rossi asked, his own eyes similarly cold as he watched the clip replay one last time. “Will they work with us on this, Aaron?” Aaron, not Hotch. Rossi was wary. That was his pack voice, not his work one, and the cases that blurred those lines never ended well. For anyone.

“They have to,” Hotch said firmly. “This feels like a bad one. Wheels up in twenty, everyone. Prentiss, with me.”

Heart thumping, she fell easily into step at his side as they left the room. “If it gets out that someone has been taking mated pairs,” she murmured, seeing him cock his head slightly towards her as they walked, “there’s going to be hell to pay, Hotch. So many wolves have defected over the past few years in protest of the zoning laws. People are going to panic thinking their families could be among the taken.”

Hotch _hmm_ ed softly. “They wouldn’t have called us in if they believed it to be an isolated incident,” he said finally, smacking his palm against the elevator button. “And they wouldn’t have called _us_ in at all unless they see this spiralling out of control. We need to be careful, Prentiss, and watch each other’s backs.”

Emily’s heart sunk. There it was. They weren’t the favourites, the fabled agents and profilers of Agent Gideon’s team. They were the dogs tucked to the back room of the Bureau with every other department hound… only called in when noses and paws were needed on the ground instead of boots and smiles. And Hotch would have been so much more than keeper to those stuck in this limbo, if he hadn’t been born with fur. But here they were and, if this went wrong, they’d be looking for a scapegoat.

_Here’s four, ready-made_ , she thought, looking back at her team as they gathered their gear. _Woo for us._


	4. Bad Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Two: Chapter Four to Six**

The briefing on the jet was long and tense. Gideon was as unflappable as always; Emily suspected he was just as awkward with humans as he was with wolves, so she didn’t take his reticence personally. Morgan was an asshole, also nothing new. She resisted the urge to get under his skin and smiled instead at Blake, the only human member of the team who actively bothered to treat them like agents instead of the hired help.

The wolves sat one side, the humans the other and, when the briefing was over, that divide grew.

Almost.

Emily stood and walked over to the one silent head. It was bowed over a casefile that was eight times as thick as theirs, and she thumped into the empty seat beside him and leaned into his personal space to peer down at the photos looking back up. Reid winced away, and she couldn’t help but scent the realized proximity of a male wolf outside of her direct circles. He smelled like Reid. Nothing dangerous. Nothing thrilling. Just Reid, and hints of the suppressants he was on.

“Light reading for the trip?” she teased, and he shoved his glasses up his nose and frowned distractedly. Emily could feel eyes burning the back of her neck. And the front. Basically, everyone was staring.

Let them stare.

“Missing persons reports,” he answered, and flipped through them rapidly. “Look at this map. If we discount any who have made contact with packs or family since their report, or any with children, there’s a pattern. Slightly concealed by outlying cases, but it’s so _obvious_.” He ran his fingers across the map he was hurrying to unfold, spreading it across both their laps like it was no biggie that she was there. “Emily, how did we miss this? Look—it begins in Nevada almost twelve years ago, and works down from there, hitting almost every regional pack zone.”

_Twelve years?_ Emily stared, shock thudding into her chest. _Impossible._ But, then again, who questioned a wolf leaving for the wild? It was in the nature of every wolf to go rogue at least once. Emily had, for eight wonderful months when she was a teenager. Sometimes, city life just got too _small_. Tight and enclosed and the only escape was swapping skin for fur and taking to the woods. Her memories of that time were hazed and wild and _glorious._ It was no secret that Hotch had done the same, before he’d joined the Bureau. Not that anyone would think it by looking at him. She glanced up. He stared back, expression impenetrable but, if he’d had hackles, they’d have been bristling. No leader liked a packless wolf sidling in, not even one as harmlessly transient as Reid.

“Have you shown Gideon?” she asked instead, sweeping her eyes down the neat patterns of dots and lines he’d drawn on the map.

Reid nodded, eyes worried. He looked up at her, so despondently hopeful that her heart twinged a little. “He wasn’t convinced that the authorities could have missed this for twelve years, or that kidnappers _could_ have been active this long without making a mistake, but he’s willing to allow me to investigate.” His mouth thinned, curling up into a smile that wasn’t a smile. The only hint of the wolf that hid under his neat sweater vest and crooked tie in the inhuman expression of irritation. “Within his stated parameters, of course.”

_Can’t have his pet wolf going off leash,_ some snarky part of Emily wanted to say, but that was cruel and it completely downplayed Reid’s importance within his team. It may have also been a little bit because she was jealous of that importance and how easily his gifts had allowed them to see past his species and place him within the actual BAU and not the shameful offshoot, but that was another thing she’d never admit.

“I’ll talk to Hotch,” she said, instead of any of that, and tried not to look too invested in the thankful smile he beamed in her direction. “Surely one of us can help you with that.” _Me,_ that statement said, because none of the others except maybe JJ would agree to it, but that was fine. If it meant not having to deal with Derek fucking Morgan, she’d do whatever Reid asked of her.

Maybe some of that showed on her face. Reid winced, lowering his voice. “You’ll have to work with him again someday,” he murmured, leaning closer. Emily felt rather than saw Hotch twitch with concern at their closeness. _Male brain_ , she scoffed silently. “Your animosity is unfounded.”

“He prioritizes humans over wolves,” she retorted, voice a hiss. “We were in more danger that day, Reid, and he got the humans out first. We could have been _killed_.” _You could have been killed_ , she wanted to snap, because that bothered her more than her own life did. As though the rush of anger that surged at the memory brought with it remembered scents, her nose burned with smoke, coppery blood, the heat-baked stone of the cult they’d been trapped inside. She closed her eyes to compartmentalize for a moment and saw Reid’s tawny body laid out broken on the sandy ground. Morgan had taken point into the building, saving the humans first. In that dank basement where Emily and Reid were trapped as wolves, their pack disallowed entry because of _procedure_ , Reid had bled and bled and bled while Morgan not only rescued the _innocents_ , but the bastards who’d put them down there as well.

And the building had burned above them.

Reid shifted uncomfortably. “He thought we were able to remove ourselves from the situation,” he protested, because he’d never blame a teammate for leaving him to die. “He thought we were… abler than the humans. You know this. It’s not his fault we were hurt.” His hand brushed his shirt collar nervously and her anger flickered again at the nervous tic.

Under that collar, there was a burn that marked how close they’d come.

“And if it wasn’t for Gideon realizing we were still inside, we’d be more than hurt,” she said coolly, pushing the papers aside and standing. “And if it wasn’t for _Hotch_ breaking every rule to get us out…” She left that there and walked away, back to her silent team. They’d never agree on Morgan, never. And yet, Reid still chose _them_ over the wolves who’d actually been there for him.

Reid wasn’t capable of holding a grudge, and she wasn’t capable of forgiveness.

“You’re upset,” Hotch murmured, moving his briefcase to make room for her. JJ inched closer, hands curled in her lap and mouth thin.

“Nope,” she replied curtly. Slumping into that seat, she kneaded her knuckles into her eyes and cursed the temper that the suppressants tended to leave her with. Not to mention, they _all_ stunk of it; the acrid ozone scent of the pills was noxious to her nose. Not really optional to forgo them when flying into another pack’s territory, even for those who weren’t bothered by the season’s whims. “Reid thinks this is definitely serial, going back twelve years. I want to help him investigate his theory. He’s found patterns of abductions that seriously suggest he’s right, Hotch.”

“Kid usually is,” Rossi said passively, without committing to backing her on this. Pity. Rossi was a powerful ally when Hotch was moody.

“Is his evidence sound?” Hotch didn’t look pleased. That wasn’t a new look on him, so she wasn’t overly concerned. Ever since Haley… well, overprotectiveness wasn’t new on him either. “I’d prefer you were in the field with me or Dave, rather than staying in the precinct. You’re the sharpest out of us at tracking, and in a New York alleyway exposed to several hours’ foot traffic, we’ll need that strength.” He was pointedly not mentioning that the best tracker in DC was sitting metres away, reading some casual twenty-thousand words a minute like it was nothing.

Emily moved. Reaching for her water bottle, she dry-swallowed three pills with a swig of water and willed away the exhaustion. Hotch eyed the pills, but said nothing. “You know it’s sound, his evidence always is, and JJ isn’t a profiler,” she replied calmly, “and Rossi and Reid _always_ end up fighting over crap when you put them in the same room together.”

“Hey,” protested Rossi, bristling. “He starts it—”

“He’s an unfamiliar wolf—” Hotch began.

“You don’t like that Gideon plucked him from _your_ team when he first got shoved all knock-kneed and new through the front door,” she retorted. “And Rossi’s got weird old-fashioned thoughts about things, although he’d never admit to them.” Rossi huffed, folding his arms and sulking as Hotch shot him a glare that was immediately recognisable as _shut up_.

“Packs are not an old-fashioned concept,” Hotch said, his eyes narrowing. She watched his chest move as he breathed in deeply, letting it out in a slow exhale. “His acceptance into Gideon’s unit didn’t require him to remove himself from pack life.”

“The laws do though,” she pointed out, but that was bull. They all knew it. They worked as a unit, they ran as a pack, and fuck the zoning regulations. Reid wouldn’t have been turned away. He _hadn’t_ been turned away. He’d left by choice. “He’s not an interloper. He’s been here for years now, Aaron. If he was going to challenge our ways, he’d have done it.” She paused, wondering how far he’d let her take this, and then deciding to plunge ahead anyway as JJ made a noise that suggested she agreed. “And _you’ve_ got funny old-fashioned thoughts as well.”

Now he looked at her, blinking. She’d surprised him. Not pissed him off, and that was hopeful. “If this is about us,” he said awkwardly, as thrown as she’d ever seen him, “that has no bearing on my behaviour around him. I _can_ separate my private life from the workplace, Prentiss.” His tone suggested she was bordering on insubordination.

She looked past him, out of the window to avoid the faintest glint of dismay in his eyes that she’d brought it up. “Is this why you’re being so anxious about Reid? Really, Aaron?”

Silence.

“My vote is with the kid,” Rossi said bluntly, finally taking a side. In a heartbeat, the tension dissipated. “He’s a clever shit, Jason’s no idiot himself. If they think this is worthwhile to follow up on, I can get behind that. Besides, I don’t know about you guys, but if this turns out to be more than just a hunch… I want paws in on that investigation. Twelve years of missing wolves? Fuck. That. And, her pain in the ass manner aside, Prentiss is right. She _does_ work best with him.”

Hotch looked at her before nodding, deferring to Rossi. And this was what humans never seemed to _get_. They got all hooked up on the alpha/omega bullshit… but that wasn’t what packs were. They weren’t blindly following some pseudo-alpha personality to whatever end. They were a _partnership_ , and whoever was best to lead at any one time, led at that time. There had been cases where Emily had taken command. Even ones where JJ had.

On the way out of the jet, stepping down on the blistering cold of the New York airfield, Hotch caught her arm. Over the whistling wind, his voice was still strong enough to carry. “Em?” he called, face already ruddy from the cold. Behind him, the humans were bundling up to brace the wind that the wolves were already fearlessly facing. “Be careful, okay?”

She smirked. “Hotch, I’m going to be pushing papers,” she replied, shaking his arm off. She felt cranky, overwarm, numb inside. The effects of the suppressants. She’d probably break out by tomorrow as well. “Only thing I have to worry about is papercuts.”

 

* * *

 

The room they’d been tucked away in was stifling. Emily propped the door open with a box of files and joined Reid in the middle of the floor with her own box to work through. Occasionally, the clerk would arrive with another delivery of freshly faxed reports, adding them to the teetering stacks. They worked in silence, except for the occasional comment about a certain file. Each case went into one of three piles: possible, unlikely, impossible. 

The possible pile was worryingly large.

“Want coffee?” she said finally, and slipped away to the breakroom as he nodded and kept flicking through the densest of the data they’d been given. The trip for coffee was an exercise in not meeting people’s eyes, aware of the presence of several wolves among the humans dressed in blue around the squad room. One of them caught her in the breakroom, sidling in and closing the door tight behind her. Senses up, she smiled and tried not to look _too_ cornered. He didn’t look untrustworthy, just… nervous. Short cropped hair and grey-green eyes, he kept a respectful distance as she wiped spilled coffee from her hands.

“I’ve been sticking my head in on Sarge’s case,” he blurted out suddenly, eyes huge. “This is really looking big, isn’t it? Like, dozens of wolves taken big? Sarge has us pulling up every missing wolf over the past ten years…”

“We really don’t know enough to say,” she said gently, but he stunk of sweat. “This could be an isolated incident. Do you suspect otherwise?”

“No, but…” He stopped and swallowed. “My sister… went rogue, five years back. Me and Ma and the other girls just figured she’d gotten sick of the rat race here. It feels wrong, sometimes, limiting who we run with op… limiting who we run with. But…”

“But?” Emily coaxed, heart hammering with anticipation at some kind of break, _any_ kind of break.

“She wanted pups,” the cop continued, hands tightly clenched. “Her and her partner, they were going to try for pups that season. We were scared shitless, you know? Having a litter, that’s dangerous and we told her to just have a couple of humans, no one would judge her these days. Without packs, it’s a stupid risk, but she was determined and… then she vanished. And I thought she’d just left to raise the pups somewhere more suited to being _us_ , but maybe she didn’t have a choice after all and I’m a cop, ma’am. I’m a fucking cop. What if I missed that someone took her?” The pain in his eyes was visible even if the misery pouring out of him wasn’t burning her nose and mouth.

“Would you like us to review her case?” she asked. When he agreed, she promised to do so and pelted back to the room where Reid was sorting the piles into further smaller piles, the meanings of which were lost to her. As she burst in, he shoved a file under the others, hand hovering protectively over it.

“One more,” she declared, deciding to ignore that odd behaviour and tossing it down to him. He opened it with a wary glance, reading the contents in a heartbeat. “If you were going to have a litter, would you go north to do it?”

Reid didn’t answer right away. Instead, he finished reading the file and then lowered it slowly.  “No,” he said, voice quiet. “That would be suicide for my mate. Labour complications are increased by sixty-eight percent when birthing therianthropic young, and that’s with twenty-first century medical care. She vanished in March—if she was allowing herself to go through a season with the intention of having pups, she’d have been pregnant by then. There’s no way she’d have left her family unit, and she’d have been trapped in wolf form…”

“And out of every pair we have in the ‘possible’ pile, when were they taken?” Emily asked, feeling giddy on the cusp of working something out and sick with the knowledge that this probably wasn’t getting them any closer to actually finding the wolves. She looked at the piles again. Any of the _dozens_ of them.

“The dates are varied, but they almost all avoid the mating months,” Reid said, shuffling through to find a carefully scrawled out sheet of data he’d been keeping. “How many of these other pairs were waiting for a season to have a litter rather than raise human young? Could the kidnappers have been aware of this? They may have been aiming to take those without dependants to deliberately obscure their tracks.”

Emily shrugged helplessly. “How could we possibly find that out?” she retorted, frustrated. “Garcia perhaps, if they were putting affairs in order that may have left a data trail…”

Reid nodded, already burying himself back down in a mad shuffle of paperwork. Emily watched him, realizing she’d forgotten his coffee in her rush to bring the casefile to him. She stepped back, oddly reluctant to break his concentration, and murmured, “I’ll be back in a moment.” He didn’t respond, just inched forward a little more to reach the furthest pile, his knee knocking the mass in front of him to slide onto the ground.

“Wait, Emily,” he called, jerking his head up and staggering to his feet. His eyes were wild, his scent stressed, and she couldn’t help but step closer to him in an automatic response to alleviate that strain with her nearness. “I… the earliest. If family members are placing missing person reports, they’re likely not convinced their family went rogue—or at least willing to consider that foul play occurred. And for some of these wolves to have never returned home—I think we need to talk to the families.”

“Well, okay,” she agreed, scanning the piles. It was a reasonable thought. The families could give them more links between vics. “But that may be difficult. They’re spread all over the states.”

“They are,” Reid said. Feet shuffling on the carpet, he did a strange half turn with a single file in his hand and gestured down to the largest of the mini-stacks. “But… the largest congregation is in… Nevada. Uh. Not… not missing reports. They’re the lowest, for actually _filing_ reports but… I looked up stats on wolves absconding and Nevada is an outlier, with a marked increase in werewolf defections over the past decade compared to other states of a similar cultural context.”

Oh.

“Someone is going to have to go there,” she pointed out, reaching for her phone. Hotch was _not_ going to like this.

Reid’s mouth narrowed. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah…”

That wasn’t a promising start. She pushed a little harder. “Spence…” His eyes darted up to her. “You’re from Nevada. That’s _your_ state pack. They’ll send you.” A wary nod was his reply, fingers tight enough around the file he was clutching that it crinkled in his grip. Well. In for a penny. “Do you want me to come?” she asked. A valid request. She was the only wolf on the team without pack ties to any other state, and she doubted the Nevada wolves would be open to talking to human feds. They made Hotch and Rossi look positively progressive with their views on wolf life.

And Reid nodded: “Please,” he said. There was sweat around his collar, his skin reddening. The chemically tang of the suppressants was weakening. Due for another dose. “Bathroom… uh… I’ll be back.” He slid past, positively oozing anxiety, and she stepped back to give him space. She’d have to call Hotch while he was gone, explain their—

The file in his hand caught the light as he passed, the name on the front barely unobscured by his fingers. Clear enough in the stark black type that she unconsciously processed what it said even if the words didn’t slam home until the door had already closed behind him.

“Fuck,” she said out loud to the empty room as she realized how complicated things had probably just gotten.

_Missing: **Ethan J. Reid**._


	5. Sandstone Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five hours until their flight was due to leave and Hotch was _wired_. If Prentiss had thought that Reid was stressed earlier, that was nothing compared to the man wearing a hole in the hotel rug in front of her. She curled on her bed, tired but unwilling to sleep, and watched him pace. He reeked of worry, the whites of his eyes showing and mouth slightly open.

“You’re looking wolf-y,” she remarked with a false casualness, vividly aware that he was working himself up. He glanced at her, frowning and clicking his teeth with an irate shift of his jaw. “Aaron, calm down. We’re only going for the night.”

“We’re bare weeks away from season,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “I am _trying_ to be professional, Emily, don’t turn this back on me.”

She rolled over the bed to get closer to him, scenting. His sweat was masculine. Demanding. He hadn’t taken his suppressants this afternoon, likely to avoid the slight fogginess they left him with. Or because he _wanted_ this moment of possessively masochistic anxiety. “I’m not,” she soothed. “But seriously, Aaron, I need to go. They’ll clam up if we send a human with him, and we’re _not_ sending him alone.”

Hotch blinked. “No, no, of course not,” he said, looking appalled that she’d even suggest Reid go alone. “I’m not doing this because of us,” he added gently, as though to assuage her fears that he was going to be this much of a pain from here on out. “I’d be just this worried if it was JJ or… well, no, I’m pretty sure Rossi would be absolutely fine in Vegas.”

At that, she chuckled. “Rossi’s too much of a home wolf to send,” she said. “Same as you. You’re too… packy. Virginia is in your blood.”

His mouth twitched. “Thanks,” he said wryly, turning in a tight circle. There was still tension built in his shoulders, arching his spine. “I’m not happy about this, Emily. Not about you going, or Reid. He’s too young, too new to the season. He stinks of being unattached, and Nevada has… traditionalists. I don’t know how close he is with his family there, I don’t know the land, I don’t _know_.” He stopped again, a grimace on his lips; this time, when he whirled and strode towards her, she didn’t stop him from kissing her greedily. “I’m sending you to _strangers_ with a _stranger_ at your back.” He snarled this, the words a growl from deep in his chest, and she shuddered under the raw predator in that tone.

She thought again of the missing person file clasped tight in Reid’s fingers. One piece of the puzzle Hotch didn’t have yet, because she knew as soon as that was unearthed, Reid would be off the case before he could yelp. And they needed him. Twelve years of missing people needed him.

She bumped her hips up against his, feeling him firm against her thigh. “You’re not taking your suppressants,” she murmured. “Intending to stake a claim before I go sallying off into the desert?” It wasn’t a terrible idea. Sex was an effective tension relief, and his scent on her would soothe him. But it was painfully animalistic and some part of her wanted to roll her eyes at the very idea.

Another part of her wanted it, very much.

“No,” he said shortly. Evocative as always. “We’re on a case.”

She wrapped her legs around his waist, dragging him down hard against her and arching into him. He groaned, his hands gripping her waist roughly and meeting her halfway. Kissing her quickly in short bursts of touch, until he broke away to work down her throat with a manic gleam to his dark eyes.

That gleam was concerning. It was true fear.

“Aaron,” she gasped, undoing his pants. Just his pants. This wasn’t going to take long, they were both already on the edge. He from working his stupid brain up for the last six hours and her from her body reacting to the screaming need in his. “Calm down. I’m here.”

“You’re leaving,” he growled, and undid her shirt to bare her chest. He bit, with an unyielding pressure, where her shoulder curved into her throat. Bit and drew her in, marking her where no one could see, but she bucked into the touch anyway. Felt his nails scrabbling at her hips, dragging her pyjama pants down. Bare and wanting and cold in the air, she wrapped her legs tighter and felt him press bluntly against her. “Leaving with _him_.”

“Protecting him,” she corrected, her brain clouding a little at the combination of lust and want and suppressants all mixing together. Sex was _shit_ on the pills, but her body didn’t know that. “Like pack.”

But he pushed inside quickly, setting up a bruising pace that rapped out what they were doing in detail with the headboard against the wall, hissing _he’s not pack_ , and there wasn’t much she could say to that.

“The job needs me,” she managed weakly, gripping his shoulder tight with one hand and leaving her own marks in bruises at her fingertips.

“I know,” he choked, slamming in once, twice, twitching, _coming_ , in a broken wave that was stuttering and unsatisfying for them both. She wanted to follow, ached to follow, her own nails biting at his shirt as she scrabbled up into his body, feeling him throb and sag, spent. “Sorry, Em, sorry,” he managed, using his hand between her legs, but it was useless. The feeling was already trickling away, leaving her frustrated and tense, and she wouldn’t have been able to climax anyway on the suppressants but, still, _fuck_.

His head thumped against her shoulder, softening inside her. “That was atrocious of me,” he mumbled into her skin, kissing her gently around the area he’d marked her. “I… I’m sorry. I wasn’t…”

“It’s alright,” she replied, letting her legs smack to the bed. She wrapped her arms around him as he lay atop her, a warm, heavy weight, and hugged him close. “It served a purpose at least. You’re not being a shit now. You can make up for it later, when I’m not on that crap.” She gestured to the pill bottle sitting on top of her open go-bag.

He laughed against her shoulder, the sound humming through her chest-bone. “Oh, I can,” he said wickedly, his eyes crinkling in the corners despite the still-looming strain of the following days. “Again… and again… and _again_ …” He punctuated every word with a kiss, finally finishing with her mouth. The kiss deepened and lingered, everything they weren’t saying written in the shift of their mouths together, the sigh of their breath, the flicker of lashes.

“You’re filthy,” she complained as he slid out of her and she struggled up to make her way to the bathroom, wadding the towel he tossed her between her legs before she stood. “What will I do without you?”

Hotch shrugged, his face tightening as he reached for a report sitting atop his own gear. Clearly, he didn’t plan on sleeping at all. That was fine. She’d do the sleeping for both of them, until obligation dragged her from her bed before dawn was barely broken. “Probably learn about all kinds of irrelevant statistics,” he said grimly. “And drink far too much coffee.”

She snorted, shuffling to the bathroom without dislodging the towel. But, despite the attempt at humour, she felt his eyes lingering. “Take your damn medication,” she threw over her shoulder, aiming for light-hearted and missing the mark.

The worry was contagious.

 

* * *

 

She drove through the harshly lit streets of Vegas carefully while Reid spread a map on his lap and worked over it with a pen held loosely between long fingers. “Over one-hundred wolves have defected from the state pack over the last twelve years. Even ten wolves a year is a considerable jump from the usual four,” he was murmuring, eyes flickering from the map to the data sheets pressed between his knee and the door. “And that’s with factoring in the increased rate expected from the heightened zoning laws. Out of those, we only have… sixteen missing person reports…” He blinked, his eyes hazel-bright in the hot sun pouring through the SUV window.

“Spence,” she said quietly, catching his attention and sensing him looking at her as she rapped her fingers against the steering wheel. “When are we going to talk about Ethan? You know, that _brother_ you’ve been hiding from us.”

And silence settled between then, shocked and heavy. He sucked in a breath that rattled, recoiling back against the far side of his seat. She heard paper crunch as his hand moved against the map. “You didn’t tell—” he began, voice tight.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” she reassured him. “Not Hotch, not Gideon. But we’re going to have to eventually. If he’s a victim, he’s part of the profile… and that means you are too.”

“I wasn’t hiding him, just not talking about him. And he’s not a victim,” Reid said stiffly. “He _did_ go rogue. He contacted me beforehand, and besides, he doesn’t fit the profile. He’s single, or was. I don’t know about now.” She chanced a glance at him as he looked down into his lap, fingers working together anxiously and hair draping forward. “That was five years ago.”

“You haven’t heard from him since?” Rogue or not, if they were close, that was unusual. Even the wildest wolf took their fur off occasionally to call home, and littermates usually kept in touch. But she was an only child, her own littermates non-viable at birth, and she wouldn’t presume to know his family.

Reid shrugged. “No,” he mumbled, eyes flickering back to her. “But it’s irrelevant. Almost.” He sucked in another breath, this time sounding strained. “The most topical disappearances have been from… well, procedurally, we should work our way back through families from most recent…”

He was stalling. They were stopped, the traffic around them crawling, so she leaned over to drag his notes towards her. “Two couples from the Valley of Fire sub-pack,” she read easily. “Okay, so we’re heading down there. Easily done.”

“Sandstone wolves,” Reid blurted out, and she glanced at him. “That’s what they call us—them. Sandstone wolves. Because the name of the park is derived from the red sandstone formations scattered throughout, which appear to be on fire under the setting sun, despite the fact that the pack range actually extends a considerable length out of the park, even reaching the nearby Moapa Valley—”

“Us?” she asked quietly.

Reid blinked, his mouth settling into a miserable line. “Us,” he agreed, looking out the window so she couldn’t see his facial expression. “Out of the twenty-eight registered sub-packs within Nevada, that’s… mine. My, ah. My father… still runs with them. They’re very traditional.” Now his expression changed, turning wry. “As you can imagine, I’m not popular there.”

“That must be unusual for you,” she quipped, nudging the GPS towards him. “Plug it in, Spence. We have to go. Will your father speak to us?”

“Oh, indubitably,” Reid replied, ignoring the GPS. “I’ll guide us. You’re not going to like them, Emily. They’re very ‘continue the species’, and you’re, uh, uncommitted at your age. Cardinal sin in their eyes.”

That was… a disturbing thought, and she made a mental note to double her dose of suppressants so no weirdo wolves got any ideas. “You’re single as well,” she grumbled, following his directions. “Why are they going to focus on _me_?”

“Because I’m peculiar,” Reid said simply. “But they’ll probably titter at me anyway.” He lifted the map up to his nose and ignored any further questions. The rest of the drive was silent, despite her attempts to cajole him into conversation, with only his quick directions breaking the tension.

She missed Hotch already.

 

* * *

 

They stepped out of the car at the ingoing outpost, barely worrying about coats despite the frigid air. Within the wooden outpost up ahead, a ranger moved to greet them, his own arms bare.

“Morning,” he said, tipping his head and scenting the air. Emily kept her distance, her chin tucked in, and held out her ID. Reid did the same, lurking behind her like a really tall, gawky shadow. “Welcome to the Sandstone Pack lands. Can I help you?”

Emily opened her mouth to speak, but Reid beat her to it. “Hi, Andrew,” he said, walking past her with his shoulders tucked in. “Is my father here?”

“I’ll be damned,” the ranger said quietly, looking Reid up and down. “Spencer Reid, in the flesh. Look at you. Our Spencer, a G-Man… who’d have thought…”

“My father?” Reid’s voice was clipped, cold, and, if he’d had the ears to do it, they’d be pressed back.

“He’s likely home,” Andrew grunted, fingers trailing on his cell phone at his waist. “Want me to give him a call? Let him know the prodigal son returns…” His gaze flickered over Emily slowly. “… with a lady?”

“No need.” Reid walked back to the car, undoing his tie and taking his glasses off to shove into his bag. “I know the way. Agent Prentiss, the roads here aren’t well maintained to discourage outsiders…” His mouth twisted slightly. “…we’ll be better off on paw. Is that okay by you?” Despite his casual tone, he sidled around the car to put the door in between his body and her as he stripped, shedding his cell and case notes into a shoulder bag designed for a wolf to be able to shrug its way into. She nodded, skidding her own cell across the hood of the car for him to pack and reluctantly unbuckling her weapon. There was no point taking two in the bag, and she’d already seen him tuck his own revolver away within it. Unlike him, she didn’t bother hiding as she stripped. Nudity was nothing to a wolf, and Andrew didn’t even glance twice at her.

A shift and a flicker of the changing world around her, and she was a wolf padding around the car to find him crouched on his own four paws, working his way awkwardly into the bag’s strap. It bumped against his flank when he stood, shaking his fur out and knocking the car door shut with his shoulder. Against the white blaze of his chest, his tags clinked.

_Come on,_ he said, his mind’s voice thin with misery. _Let’s get this over with._

“Been a long time since you ran here, kid,” Andrew called after them as they trotted past him and down a narrow deer trail leading across the sparse desert scrubland. “Might run into those who don’t know you. With the season, everyone’s on edge… you be careful.”

_He warning us or threatening us?_ Emily asked, but Reid only huffed in reply and sped up, his paws quick flashes on the hard-packed ground.

They ran without mind for what direction they went, Reid leading her unerringly down a remembered path. She could scent wolves by the dozens, unfamiliar and unpleasant to her nose, her hackles up with the pressure of so many concerning scents. Reid was a vivid blaze of _knowing_ to the front of her, and she continually brushed against his mind to calm herself. Every time she did, he brushed back with a soothing feeling of _I’m here, I’m with you._ No words were needed. It was a soundless proclamation of _I’ll keep you safe_ and she hugged close to his trail with her eyes locked on his thin flanks bobbing in front of her, savouring that promise.

Distantly, so distantly, she could _almost_ sense her pack. Too far to peg what direction they were in and impossible to get even a sense of feeling from them; she was just aware that, somewhere, they still existed. It was a horrifyingly lonely feeling. Like drifting out to sea while staring at lights receding on the shoreline. But, she wasn’t alone. Around them, she could feel minds buzzing. Thoughts and feelings being shared, a network of lives. An outsider looking in, she couldn’t intrude on that communal pack unless they shouted for all to hear, but she watched Reid carefully and saw his ears swivel back and forth, his eyes flickering around. Reacting.

He still answered to this pack.

She wasn’t sure if that was comforting or not.

Ahead, she could see blocky shapes on the horizon. Squat against the cloudy sky, she knew they were roughly hewn cabins. Most of these people would live in the surrounding towns and cities, only commuting here for pack meetings and to realign with their wolves. Some would live out here permanently. For those who flittered back and forth, the temporary cabins arranged together up ahead served as a second home.

A chittering song from a chorus of throats rattled to life around them, startling her half out of her fur. She lurched to a stop, back humped and hips low with her bushy tail bristling, unable to stop a snarl of shock from twisting out of her chest. Reid stopped too, circling back in an easy lope to range around her, answering that call with his own shrill vocalizations. Listening to him return the song, she realized something.

_I’ve never heard you call before_ , she said, shaking her surprise out and standing straight before the wolves could flood around them in a curious wave of tans and greys. Desert wolves, she found herself staring at a row of long-legged short-coated wolves the same colour as the sandstone and scrub around them. Even within these ranks, Reid looked thin and gangly in comparison, his ears still overlarge, his muzzle still narrow. Brighter fur, too, she was smug to note. Almost savagely. Like she wanted to stand next to him with her own black coat gleaming and declare that he was the best of them—the smartest, the handsomest, and most of all, _not theirs_.

It was a jealous, irritable response to suddenly being surrounded by an alien pack, but one she treasured before shoving away. Someone had to be possessive about the kid. No one else seemed to be pushing to be on Team Reid.

The network of minds around them opened, allowing her into a clamouring reprise of voices talking over each other at once. _Hello, hi! New wolves—I know him, that’s the Reid boy—no, not that one. The oldest one—he left, didn’t he—crawling back—half-breed blood always tells—can you scent her—someone should call William—feds in the park? Bet Jake fucked up again—hips on that one. She’ll throw good pups. Think he’s covering her?_ She withdrew quickly, curling her muzzle at the last speaker, a large brindle male, who stared back without shame.

And the wolves silenced suddenly, slinking back as a tall male with a sandy-dun coat slipped through their ranks. Emily knew him for his eyes and his bearing, even if his scent didn’t give him away.

_Dad,_ Reid said politely, slipping forward to brush his muzzle against his father’s face in a careful greeting. Body submissive, tail low, the touch was quick and perfunctory. _Agent Prentiss and I have some questions about missing wolves in the area. Would we be able to speak to you?_

Shock rippled through the ranks. Emily quickly switched her focus back, catching the tail end of that wave _—missing wolves? Who? —probably rogues—Jenny last month—sniffing around our females._

_Of course,_ William responded with a soft rush of withdrawn affection that Reid didn’t respond to, before turning and leading the way through the pack. _You should have called ahead. We could have met in town, had dinner. Perhaps visited your mother._ The surge of anger was raw and completely unlike Reid. Emily felt her skin twitch with the desire to shy away from that fury, quickly hurrying forward to bump her shoulder against Reid’s. _Here, I’m here,_ that touch whispered, and he leaned into it. _In here, we can talk in private,_ William said, padding up a series of wooden steps onto a neatly stained porch and nudging the unlocked door open with his nose. Reid and Emily followed, Reid’s bag catching on the doorframe, into a sparse living room decorated with nothing but a battered couch, liberal bookshelves, a brightly patterned rug, and a mantelpiece positively teeming with photos.

There was the suggestive grinding whisper of shifting, and Emily looked back from the mantle to find William standing in front of them, his posture wary. Human in front of strange wolves was a vulnerable position to have placed himself into, even if one of those wolves was his estranged son. “If you wish to speak privately,” he said, leaning back against the wall with one hand splayed on the wallpaper, “I suggest taking your fur off. Every mind in this place is turned to us right now.”

Reid blinked. That was blatantly untrue. Mind to mind was far more private than any verbal communication, especially when everyone in the area had canid hearing. But he shifted back anyway, turning his body self-consciously away from Emily and sliding his shoulder bag around to cover the side of his hip and ass bared to her. Fumbling his glasses out of the bag, he slipped them on. “Verbal communication can be overheard,” he said quietly, hands twitching towards his front as though he’d very much like to cover himself. Emily rolled her eyes at his reticence. “I’m not here to instigate anything. It’s unnecessary to immediately attempt to discomfort me.”

William’s mouth turned into a smile that wasn’t really one. Almost sad, a little frustrated. Emily scowled at that expression and shifted in a heartbeat, feet steady on the floorboards as she adjusted her posture to stand evenly and completely unconcerned. William’s eyes flickered over her, judging her in a heartbeat. There was nothing sexual in the gaze, no interest in the look or in his body, but he was absolutely sizing her up as a prospective danger. Which she was, so she merely smiled and relaxed into that judgement, letting him assume what he wanted from her trim physical condition.

“Yes,” he said finally, turning his attention back to Reid. She did too. From this angle, Emily could see the lines of his ribs, the shift of muscles in his back, a nerve working in his jaw, the swollen-red burn slashed down his shoulder and shoulder-blade. It was an almost distracting view; the other werewolf never having been this unclothed in front of her before. “You always were bizarrely prudish. We are _werewolves,_ Spencer. What’s the difference between parading around with fur or without? Not like your—”

“How is Ethan?” Reid intercut, cocking his head to the side. “Have you heard from him?” He glanced at the mantle, Emily following his eye-line to the photos. From this angle, half were hidden from her by the gleam of sunlight through the window, but she could just see two boys cheesing it up for the camera with their arms around each other.

“No, but you know that. Now _you’re_ attempting to gain the upper hand. Did you drive all the way out here to play verbal chess?” William’s voice was sharp, genuine sadness hidden below the angles. And this was likely the true reason he’d made them switch to human—if they hadn’t been trained profilers, that sadness would have been obscured to them in a way he never could if they were communicating as wolves.

“Not at all, Mr. Reid,” Emily cut in, her voice overloud and unexpected in the room. “Dr. Reid, do you have the photos? Mr. Reid, what can you tell us about these people?”

Reid obediently slid the case files out, laying them on the back of the couch so William could step up to examine them, his eyebrows lifting. “Jenny and Michael Roberts,” Reid said softly. “Kyle and Clara McCain. Both married, both missing from this sub-pack within the past three years. No missing person reports filed and all four have been listed as defected by their families.”

“I’m confused,” William replied, looking up with a frown. “I know the McCains, or I did. I’m a legal advocate for therians within Nevada State, which brings me into contact with a lot of wolves outside of my usual running grounds. What suggests that they _didn’t_ just defect? Are you suspecting foul play?”

“They’re from within this area, we were considering that perhaps you had more than just a casual acquaintanceship with them and could shed light on that question,” Emily began, but William was already shaking his head.

“There are thirty-two thousand therianthropes registered as living in Nevada,” he said, straightening. “Twenty-thousand of those are wolves. The Sandstone wolves, due to our proximity to the pack-free zone of Las Vegas, are the largest sub-pack within the state—five thousand strong, sprawling beyond our natural parameters. Agent—I’m sorry, what was your name?”

“Prentiss,” Emily said coolly, seeing Reid’s ears reddening. The derogatory tone to William’s voice was almost visceral.

“Agent Prentiss, a defection rate of four in three years in a population of twenty-thousand doesn’t seem so high to me,” William finished. “What makes these so different?”

“There’s a pattern,” Reid blurted out. “It’s a small pattern, but noticeable. The dates are varied, but the months occur in increments. The majority of the defections by those fitting the profile—far more than four, Dad—take place at the same three time periods a year. Look—two thousand and three. Six defections matching the profile in January. Two in May. Two in September. Another six in January again. This is from Nevada _alone_ , and they’re your wolves too.”

“By the time a wolf within our packs reaches twenty-two, they’re likely either mated or promised to be so,” William said. “That’s two seasons into maturity. Does your profile account for that, Spencer? Any werewolf in a traditionalist pack is going to be coupled by the time they reach an age where going North is likely.”

“The pattern endures into progressive states and pack-free zones,” Reid replied. “And not _every_ wolf is mated… just the ones you admit to.” His eyes were dark and bitter below his carefully professional gaze. “Traditionalists account for very few states.”

“Unfortunately,” said William with a glance at the photos again. Emily moved, the sun through the windows having shifted while they were talking and revealing the photos. One of the boys was immediately recognizable as Spencer, thick glasses and curls and all. The other was broader, but just as gangly. Dark hair where Spencer’s was brown, his eyes two shades closer to green than hazel. But the faces were the same, under the differences and, in every photo, they pressed close. Not one of the boys in the photos was aged over twelve. At some point, whoever had been taking the endless grinning photos had put down the camera and not picked it back up again.

“Thank you for your time,” Reid said stiffly, sliding the photos back into his bag along with his glasses. “You’ve been… well, thanks.”

“Spencer,” William called, but Reid was already out the door. Emily followed, shifting hastily. A gaggle of young girls tittered closer as Reid skidded on the porch, shifting hastily and bounding down the street, through a corridor of stares. Emily followed, someone wolf whistling nearby, closing her ears and her mind to the lewd comments that whispered out from hidden eyes around. Not quite quick enough to shut out William’s final call though, standing in wolf form on the porch behind them: _visit your mother, Spencer. She misses her boys._

Reid had paused on the edge of the houses, waiting for her. Another female was there, shrinking closer with her tan fur sleek and groomed, ignoring his aggressively hunched stance. Emily turned the corner, saw his muzzle curl, his tail bristling up, and surged forward with a baying snarl. _Fuck off_! she barked, and the girl vanished with a scampering patter of panicked paws.

Blinking, Reid looked at her oddly, surprise and glee and a thick, crowding kind of shame colouring his thoughts all at once in a cloying medley of emotions. _That may give the wrong impression,_ he said with a whisk of his black-tipped tail.

She studied him. _But you’re not mad with me, despite that likely shattering any chances of getting them to talk to us,_ she said finally. _Which means you’re mad at **them**. What are they saying that I can’t hear, Spence?_

_You don’t want to know,_ he replied, turning and padding back to the car. _But there’s nothing here that will help us. We’ll try the next pack._ A teasing howl followed them, dancing on the breeze. Stupidly vapid and intending to be arousing. Reid’s shoulders hunched. _I hate spring_ , he whispered, and she couldn’t help but almost agree.


	6. Coyote Caprice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, where does your mom live?” Emily asked casually as they drove back towards Vegas, intending to liaise with several contacts there before heading out to the more remote packs. As Reid had reminded her, seventy percent of therianthropes lived within urban areas. Reid, not for an instant fooled by her casual tone, froze in the act of tucking his shirt more securely into his pants.

“Pardon?” he asked politely, despite there being absolutely no way he hadn’t heard her.

“You. Your mom. Where does she live?” Emily repeated, hearing her phone buzz with a message. “That’ll be Hotch. Can you get it for me? And if she’s in town, we should drop in on her at some point… she might know something.”

“Why would she know something?” Reid said. The phone _booped_ as he swiped it unlocked. “He wants to know how we’re doing. And says Garcia has found more cases in the northern parts of the state, and that he’s in contact with them regarding whether or not they’ll speak to us. We may be staying longer than expected.”

“Well then,” she said, always one to find the silver lining, “where does your mom live? Come on, we’re going to have to wait for JJ and Garcia to finish getting us in with packs we don’t already have paws in with. If they’re doing that on their end, we’re going to be wasting time here anyway twiddling our thumbs. It’s either that, or we hit the Strip.” She was kidding and he knew it, huffing out a laugh.

Silence ticked into the car as he wavered between wanting to see his mom and wanting her _not_ to meet her. Emily waited. He’d decide, one way or another, how this went. In the meantime, she pulled into a mall parking lot, leaning back and typing back to Hotch to work out their next move.

**To Bossman: _Sandstone wolves weren’t helpful. Reid’s got a pattern though. Reckons they’re taking them every four months—Jan + May + Sep +Jan again. Any idea why? Genius doesn’t seem to have figured it yet. <_**

**> From Bossman: _Nope. There’s no pattern in where they’re being taken from coinciding with those months? Gideon says to get him working on a geo profile while you drive. JJ talking to the Charleston Peak wolves. They’re reclusive, so it’s hard to get a firm answer on whether they’ll allow you access to pack grounds, but she says they’re also cooperating._**

“Charleston Peak Pack,” she said, reading over Hotch’s message. “What do we know about them?”

“Bristlecone wolves. Mount Charleston is the most topographically prominent peak in Nevada,” Reid murmured, “but they’re a small pack. Almost entirely contained within the Mount Charleston wilderness. Uh. Census data is intermittent because they’re also one of the few places within the state that encourage an almost rogue lifestyle, but its estimated they have about four-hundred wolves under their banner. But they don’t like outsiders.”

Her phone beeped again. **> From Bossman: _JJ just got back to me. They’ll talk to you tomorrow, 0900 exactly. Sending coordinates to meeting place. You’ll have to stay overnight. Contact is flighty. Tread light._**

“What does it mean if they’ve agreed to talk to us tomorrow morning then?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the phone screen.

Reid’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “It means they’re scared,” he said finally. “Tomorrow? What are we doing until then?”

“Geographical profile,” she told him, responding quickly: **To Bossman:** **_No pattern noticeable. Standby until then? Miss you._ < **“I can go through the rest of the data Garcia is hoarding up on our victim’s pasts. The others won’t have time to be doing it if they’re still working the field.”

**> From Bossman: _Correct. I’ll send through some data we need analysed, but also get some sleep. You didn’t last night. You’ll be on paw to get up to the meeting place, and it’s not an easy trek._**

**From Bossman: _It’s only been a few hours. Now who’s clingy? <_**

“Do we still have some spare time?” Reid asked, his voice muted. She nodded, half-smiling at her phone. “Mom… she’s at the Bennington Sanatorium. I have to call ahead to arrange to see her, they uh, don’t like surprise visits much.”

“Go ahead.” Emily watched as he stepped out of the car to call them, pacing in the lot with his back to her. Sanatorium? That was… unexpected.

Her phone beeped one final time. **> From Bossman: _But I miss you too._**

Sap.

Reid slid back into his seat, distracting her from her phone with his face emotionless. She typed out a final _kk, gonna drop in on Reid’s mom before heading to hotel. Make sure you book us a nice one this time_ , and turned the ignition, shooting him a bright smile. “Need to talk?” she queried, pulling out into traffic and following his directions easily. “Because, you know, you can’t really drop ‘sanatorium’ on me and not expect me to ask questions.”

“I know,” he replied, spreading a map on his lap and beginning to mark it with a red pen. “But I know you respect me enough not to push further into my private life. She has schizophrenia. I think you’ll like her despite that though.” The pen jagged across the paper as she hit a pothole, leaving a thin line that he stared sadly at. “Um. She’s not a wolf.”

Oh. “Human?” she asked, eyebrows threading together. That wasn’t possible. A human birthing a wolf pup? A _litter,_ no less? Wolves had to remain in wolf form for the entire duration of a therianthrope pregnancy. The conception itself _had_ to be in wolf form, during mating season, otherwise the kid came out on two legs instead of four. Having human kids at any point seemed to cause the body to miscarry any following attempts at litters…

And no human had ever birthed a wolf pup. Not even a human born of wolves.

“No,” was all he’d say, which didn’t really clear a thing up, honestly. And the entire drive, he almost seemed to mope, as though he thought that whatever she was going to learn about him today, it was going to ruin him in her eyes. She couldn’t imagine a thing that would. But, walking into the bright room where a faded woman sat reading solved the mystery instantly. _Oh Reid,_ Emily thought, on her first snuff of the flower-scented air. _You silly thing. Like I’d **care**_.

Suddenly, despite their friendship which had developed over the past years of foreign movies and getting each other disgustingly drunk after terrible cases, his reluctance to tell her anything about himself or his past made sense.

“Hi, Mom,” said Reid to the woman, who looked up and beamed at him.

“Hi, baby,” she said, surging to her feet to hug him close, hands on either side of his face as she looked him up and down. “So skinny! What are they feeding you up in that governmental hellhole you call a home?”

“Rats, mostly,” Emily quipped, stepping forward to hold out her hand. “Hi, ma’am. Special Agent Emily Prentiss. I’m proud to work with your son.” Diana Reid studied her carefully before taking the offered hand with a grip that was light, her scent hot and musky and setting Emily’s arms to tingling. She smelled like Reid but wilder, a warning smell.

_Coyote_ , that scent whispered.

“This is the friend I’ve told you about in my letters,” Reid explained with a shy duck of his head.

And the wariness vanished, replaced with a welcoming smile. “Ah, the beautiful wolf with the darkling coat!” she exclaimed, and Emily blinked. Reid flushed guiltily. “Yes, Spencer tends to get quite lyrical in his letters. Tell me, please, is your pack-member as ethereal as he describes? The honey-white wolf with the blue eyes?”

“JJ,” Emily laughed, delighted. Oh, _that_ was getting texted to her as soon as they left this place. “Yes. Yes, she is, and she’s going to be _so_ happy to hear that description.”

“You mean he hasn’t told her?” Diana _tsk_ ed, smacking Reid’s arm gently. “Silly boy. You have a poet’s tongue. _Use_ it. Heaven knows, your brother does. That cub could charm honey from a bear if he wished to. Oh, where are those photos, I know William brought them here…” She bustled off, fluttering over books and folders and boxes as Reid tried to coax her back to her chair. Ignoring him completely except to order him to ‘reach up there, you lanky thing, and get that box down’. Reid, appropriately cowed, did so without complaint.

“Ahh, here we go…” Diana paused and a flicker of something passed over her face at the word on the tip of her tongue, amber glinting low in her eyes. In her hands, a book trembled. It was the first hint of her illness, beyond the paper-thin shade of her skin and the wispy quality of her body, like a wind was waiting to whisk her away as soon as she let her guard down.

“Just Emily,” Emily said quietly, remembering the bitterness in the words _governmental hellhole._ Somehow, she doubted Reid’s job did his relationship with his mom any favours.

“Emily,” Diana repeated. “From the Latin name _Aemilia,_ most commonly meaning ‘rival’. A powerful name. Determined. Come look at my pups. I’m led to believe that this is what a mother does in her son’s company, in order to make him bluster and blush.” Reid was indeed doing both those things as Diana flipped the book open to reveal two gangly pawed puppies tumbling over each other on a wide bed. Reid was immediately notable, his fur honeyed next to his brother’s sandier fallow. If that didn’t give him away, the thick puppy-proof googles strapped to his skinny head definitely did.

Emily squeaked, covering her mouth. Hard-ass or not, _it was a puppy in goggles_. On his hind legs begging for the camera, one white-socked paw held out plaintively and tongue visible. Curled around his legs, his brother was busily gnawing on his tail. Puppy Reid didn’t seem to mind, his attention wholly on the parent with the camera.

“So many pictures,” Diana said wistfully, flicking through. The two pups in matching tartan coats. Chasing leaves. Curled on their father’s lap, he a human with Diana a wide-eared coyote at his side. Seeing her in her shift, the narrow-hipped canid, Emily could see where Reid threw closer to coyote than wolf. The same black dorsal stripe, the same tipped tails. The same bat-ears cocked eagerly for any sound. Even that young, Ethan was burlier, shaggier. Wolfier.

“The first two years are strange. Until they shift to human for the first time, it feels… animalistic, to care for them. Primal. Your skin doesn’t feel right unless you’re furred because there are these tiny, vulnerable creatures who have no choice but to totter about on four legs… and then they work out how to shift and there’s no holding them back.” She smiled tiredly. “Spencer was human by the time he was seventeen months. Obscenely early. The doctors worried. I didn’t. You knew better than them, didn’t you, Spencer?”

“Early shifting can result in developmental delays as the body redirects resources away from cognitive growth,” Reid murmured, his eyes locked on a photo of two toddlers in the bath. Ethan on his hands and knees, growling. Reid on his knees with his hands wrapped around the rim of the bath, eyes on the camera and bubbles in his hair. Always looking for his parents, in every photo. “It’s discouraged.”

“Didn’t hurt you,” Emily commented, rolling her eyes at him. “Your brother on the other hand…” Diana had turned the page to reveal a five-year-old boy going very intently cross-eyed to look at the peg someone had attached to his nose, another small hand hovering just out of focus behind his shoulder. Reid smiled faintly. “Do I get to see awkward teen photos now?”

Reid lurched his gaze away, studying his nails as though they’d suddenly become the most important things in the room. Diana made a soft noise, paging through to what was indeed an awkward teen photo… of Ethan. Alone. The first one of him alone Emily had seen.

Ethan wasn’t smiling anymore. It was a glower, the first hint of scruff around his jaw. He didn’t look much like Reid here.

“College,” Reid mumbled as an excuse. “He could have gone. He chose not to.”

“He chose to help you,” Diana said sharply. “Your father wouldn’t have permitted you both…” She stopped, eyes shuttering closed. “…but I would have. And I wasn’t there. Baby, I’m…”

Reid’s phone rang loudly, startling them all. He fumbled to answer, striding from the room with a strained look at his mom on the way out.

“They place such importance upon having children,” Diana said suddenly into the awkward silence. Emily twitched, looking at her. She’d adjusted to the suppressant scent, but Diana would still be vividly aware of it on both of their skins. “Packs do. Are you part of a pack, Emily? Spencer says you are, but his view on packs is skewed by his own pack’s rampant mishandling of his formative years.”

“I don’t plan on it,” Emily said politely, thinking of Jack with a twinge of unease at the task ahead. Her commitment to Aaron included the boy, and she was terrified of that just as much as she was excited by it. “I’m not quite the mothering kind.”

“A valid life choice.” Diana closed the book with a snap. “I envy your ease of stating that. There is nothing quite so cutting as failing your children… twice. His father—”

Reid strode back in, expression tense. “Sorry, Mom,” he said quickly. “Agent Prentiss, we have to go. That was Dad. They’ve reported two wolves missing. A mated pair.”

“Sandstone wolves?” Diana said, eyebrows lifting. But even as she spoke, Reid was rushing over to kiss her on her thin cheeks, his hand catching hers and squeezing slightly as he raced through his goodbyes. “That’s concerning. Spencer, honey, don’t—”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “Gotta go. We’ll visit before we leave if we can, okay? Love you.” And he was gone, hurtling out the door with his bag banging on the frame. Emily dashed after him, her heart thumping.

If the kidnappers had struck here, they could be right behind them. They could end this _now_.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Reid,” she called back over her shoulder, but Diana didn’t respond.

She called Hotch in the car after Reid briefed her on the call from his father, tense as the familiar, “Hotchner,” rolled into her ear. Every part of her sparked up at the familiar baritone, sensing a hunt and aching for her leader to be at her side. But she had Reid, and they’d been working missing persons together enough that this was nothing new to them. “Emily, I thought I told you to go slee—”

“We’ve got a new case here,” she told him quickly. “Chance and Jackson Denver. William Reid just called in with the details. Apparently, they came out to the pack-lands for a while, but our visit had William worried so he did a run-around and checked out all the houses to see how everyone was doing. Found theirs empty, has been for a few days. They didn’t take anything with them. He thought it was odd since everyone is sticking close to home with the season changing.”

“Have they alerted the authorities?” Hotch said, his voice tense. “Filed an official report?”

Reid was already shaking his head. She translated: “He doesn’t want to yet. Says they’re not the type to go rogue, plus they’re in their fifties with multiple homes, a real estate portfolio, investments… and five grown wolf kids. None living in state.”

“They don’t really match the profile,” Hotch pointed out. The SUV bumped heavily as Reid sped to their destination, determined to at least attempt to snuff the place out. They needed noses to the ground, even if it turned out to be a false alarm. “And far older than any others taken.”

“Maybe they’re getting desperate,” Reid murmured, but Hotch heard him despite that. “I messaged Gideon. He wants us out there with the search teams. They’re keeping it in-house right now, wolves only, but if we’re out there and come up cold, we can alert the authorities on the Denver’s behalf even if the pack proves reluctant. We need more exposure that these disappearances are occurring. If they ran on their own, they’ll have left a trail. If someone took them, _they’ll_ have left a trail. Under optimal conditions, scents can last up to thirteen days after they’ve been laid.”

“If they’re getting desperate, they’re dangerous,” Hotch warned her. “If Gideon wants him out there, I want you with him. But Em?”

Em. Not Prentiss. “Yeah?” she said, pissed with his informality when they needed to be on their game.

His voice was rough. “We can’t be there with you,” he murmured, pitching his tone so it was for her and her alone. “Be careful.”

“Always,” she promised.

 

* * *

 

The ground flashed by under her paws, following Reid as he unerringly tracked their way along the trail the two wolves had taken. Even on the sandy plains around the firestone rocks, Reid hadn’t mislaid the scent. She was mildly impressed; the shifting ground would have lost her in a heartbeat. He seemed to be able to follow the thinnest trace, working as her nose as she was his eyes, his own ill-suited without contacts to see easily-missed details.

It was teamwork they’d repeated many, many times before.

_They’re not running,_ Reid commented, lifting his head to study the way forward. She’d already noted this, spotting shallow paw-prints that remained near rocks and tufts of grass where the wind hadn’t marred them. Five hours old, at her estimate, and Reid was certain whoever had left them wasn’t in a hurry. Minute amounts of sweat collecting in the pads of paws left odours that hinted to their well-being, and he could read that like she could a book. _They’re calm. Deliberate. I think they may actually have just gone north._

_Except that they’re heading east,_ she pointed out. _Towards the ridge and out of the park. There’s nothing over there but the valley, more people, residential areas._ The ground rumbled very slightly under them as she spoke.

_Freight trains and a depot,_ Reid commented slowly, turning his head in the direction of that rumble. The sweep of desert gave way to an inky promise of trees in that direction, the rough, wiry kind that could withstand the Southern Nevada climate. It would be an hour’s run to reach, the distances over the expanse of nothing cheekily illusionary. _Come on_. They ran as quick as they dared without losing their trail. Behind them, the calls of the rest of the pack echoed as they communicated. They moved in grid patterns, travelling slower to ensure that they’d find anything that the two agents missed. A practised pattern from people well aware that a missing child in the desert in the heat of summer would need to be found as fast as possible. Scouts on point, sweepers behind.

Reid wore his shoulder bag still. She paced him, brushing her shoulder against it with her gaze locked forward. _The depot?_ she asked. _What are you thinking?_

_I don’t know,_ he admitted, and she could feel his distraction as his brain calculated something while his senses worked on keeping them on track. _I—_

There was a screaming yelp nearby. Emily whirled on her paws, surging towards that noise. Reid, faster than she was but with half the stamina, rocketed by her and leapt over a bluff, vanishing in a tumble of shale and scree. She blew out a breath, climbing after him and following the feel of his mind— _worry, fear, adrenaline, interest, worry, focus—_

_There’s nothing here?_ he sent back, all of his emotions switching to confused. She slowed very slightly, glancing back to lock the path they’d come into her mind’s eye. A learned habit from only half being as good at following a scent trail as he was. _There’s just rocks and—_

His thought was cut off with a surge of irritation and surprise and a sharp _ow_. Not a word, just a feeling. It was an electric shock of sensation, like backing a rump against a hot car and having it zap the bared fur. Unpleasant and mildly tingly.

_Didja trip?_ she teased him, and he sent back an annoyed huff. _Could it have been an actual coyote that squealed?_ He didn’t answer. _Reid?_ Padding around the rock, she found him standing with his legs splayed, neck arched around to stare at his hindquarters. It was a bizarre split-chicken posture, and she snorted with laughter.

He looked at her oddly. _Ow?_ he said this time, taking a few steps forward as his hind legs slipped out from under him. _Uh?_ There was a fading focus to his thoughts, like an ill-tuned TV. In and out as though he was deliberately blocking her.

_What are you—_ she managed, right before the electric shock buzzed through him again and he barked out loud. This time it came with a mechanical _ka-thunk_ audible to her ears and the meaty _snick_ of something impacting flesh. Reid took three skipping steps to the right, away from the biting pain, and she stared blankly at the dart in his side.

And clicked a heartbeat too late as the piercing _snick_ hit her next, her shoulder blazing. _Ka-thunk_ went the rifle a second before the dart bit in tight. She snarled and whirled on it, ripping it out with her jaws. It took a nice chunk of fur and skin with it, the end wickedly barbed.

_Em…_ Reid slurred, his voice hazing. She yowled with rage, hearing answering calls from the distance. Too far. Not pack. Lurching towards where the dart had hurtled from, it came again— _ka-thunk—_ and the following shock-sharp bite of a dart. From the other side now. Multiple shooters. She snapped at it, overshot, over balanced. Almost tumbled. _Sedatives aren’t immediate. They take… take… time. Run. Run. **Run!**_

He howled the last word, staggering up from a slumping crouch and racing forward. She chased him because it was away from the sluggish foggy pain of the dart still in her hip, away from the _ka-thunk_. Or towards. She couldn’t remember. And they ran as their bodies screamed, muscles pulling, sweat foaming, panting. Past the bluff. Kept going.

_Don’t stop_ , she coaxed him, feeling exhaustion pulling her down to the ground. Ignoring it. _Don’t stop,_ she coaxed him again, but they were blinking up at the bluff. A circle. They’d circled.

_Oh,_ he mewled, eyes glazed and staring, and rolled sideways. Hit the dirt on heavily on the flank with the dart and snapped at the air.

_Don’t you dare,_ she snarled at him and at the shapes moving towards them from the shadows. _Get up! Get away! Spence, get up!_

_Watch the black bitch,_ someone whispered. _She’s aggressive._

_Down, girlie,_ said someone else. _Play nice, now. Feisty thing, isn’t she? Lucky the male went down fast._

_Told you I could calculate their weights. Piece of piss. Get the propofol ready. Ketamine alone isn’t going to knock her out and I don’t fancy getting nipped._

She looked at Reid and he closed his eyes. Smaller build. Succumbing faster.

If they were going down, they were taking these bastards with them.

She roared again with a fading voice and attacked, tasting copper, biting fur, biting down. _Aaron_ , she screamed, as the wolf over her became a human and the wolf under her stopped fighting the drugs and started slipping away. Hands on her ruff, holding her easily despite her struggling; she was so fucking _weak._ Twisting in their grip, paws digging into the dirt, her air was cut off as his fingers twisted through the chain around her neck. It bit in deep. She gagged. The tags clinked. Tightened.

Snapped. The man swore as his hand slipped and she thrashed, seeing silver flicker down in her red-spotted vision, gulping in air greedily. Bit at something. Tasted something. Red sand.

_Aaron!_

He had to answer. He had to be there.

Her pack had to be there.

_I’m not alone…_ A needle nipped under her front leg. Hot-cold and spreading fast through her veins. She whined, _Aaron, please help_ … once more, and slumped down onto the silent wolf beneath.

As she closed her eyes, she could almost swear he answered.

_Emily?_


	7. Halcyon Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron**

“She’s not dead,” was the first thing Aaron said, and it was the only emotion besides anger that he allowed himself. One breakdown. Just one. One moment of fear and shock that tried to cripple him when he received the news: _communication lost with agents working with therianthropic search teams in Nevada. Agents Prentiss and Reid three hours out of contact. Foul play suspected._

_Please advise._

He’d received the news, said those words, and then walked from the shell-shocked bullpen with his cell. Tried to call her. Direct to voicemail.

He decided: he’d shift. Somewhere, distantly, his mind was spooling into a tight wind of paralysing fear. But she wasn’t dead. And he could reach for her if he shifted. Because she couldn’t be missing. She couldn’t be _gone_. And if she wasn’t those things, then she could answer.

Shifting felt agonisingly slow, until finally he was a wolf hunched on the carpet with his jaw open and the unbearably loud clamour of the New York precinct outside. He could hear JJ on the phone, Gideon issuing orders. _Las Vegas Police Department, contact them now. We need a location on two FBI agents. Are either of them answering? No? You, call the Valley of Fire wolf outpost. I want the names of every wolf on the search parties with them. Are their tags chipped?_

_No. There’s no answer at the pack lands. And neither Reid nor Emily are answering their cells…_

He could hear all that, as he desperately reached for any familiar touch of Emily Prentiss’s mind. She was pack. She was pack, and pack could always find pack. But he couldn’t sense her. Not even a distant awareness.

She was just too far away.

The door was tightly shut, but Rossi had never taken a hint and he wasn’t starting now. He banged it open and strode in, kicking it behind him. “She’s not dead,” Rossi said firmly, glaring down at Hotch hunkered on the floor. “Now come on. Get your shit together. They’ve only been gone three hours—that’s fuck all. We’ll find them.”

_If we were pair bonded, I could find her,_ Hotch said, feeling sick, feeling lost. For a moment, feeling completely unlike himself. But Rossi couldn’t hear him. He shifted back, kneeling on the floor like he was seeking absolution for letting her go. Repeated: “If we were pair bonded, I could find her.”

Luckily for him, when he was emotionally compromised and couldn’t lead, he had others around him who could. “If wishes were fishes, we’d all smell like shit,” Rossi said. “Now calm down. We’re going to get her. And I bet she’s going to be so pissed off when we do. Prentiss _hates_ being fussed over.”

Hotch nodded, reaching for his clothes with numb fingers and staggering to his feet. And he pushed those emotions away: the fear and the horror and the guilt. They wouldn’t help him here.

He let Rossi lead, and he followed. The space at his side was empty, accusing. He didn’t look at it, because it was a constant reminder that _she’s your second, and you let her go alone to a strange pack. And now you’re alone._

_Serves you right._

There wasn’t information to be briefed on. The five-hour flight passed in silence after a bare twenty-minute consultation between the two stunned teams, both vividly conscious of the reproachfully empty seats. Occasionally, someone would say something— _they’ll be okay_ or _what’s our plan?_ or even _do we have suspects?_ —but every time the conversation would just circle back around to the same finite conclusion: we have nothing to go on.

Garcia called two hours in. “It’s hit the news,” she said, her usually bright expression dimmed by shock. “This is actually happening. This… I thought maybe they’d just, I don’t know, gone their own way? Gotten lost looking for something… but…” She hit a button and the screen flickered to a news cast, and it was damning.

_‘Breaking News: Two FBI agents are possibly the latest victims in a long line of what authorities are only now admitting could be serial abductions ranging back over a decade. Dubbing the abductor ‘The Ghost’, the only thing authorities seem to be able to agree on is this: no victims have yet been recovered.’_

“They’ve nicknamed this sonofabitch,” Morgan snarled, covering his mouth with his hands but his eyes furious over top of his steepled fingers. “How the fuck do they know we’re thinking it’s serial? _We_ barely knew it was serial.”

“We have a leak,” JJ commented quietly, but Hotch didn’t answer. Just stood staring down at the ticker as it slammed home just how seriously he’d fucked this up.

“Aaron,” Gideon murmured, stepping up to him. Hotch looked at him. Felt nothing but anger. He kept that feeling close: anger would push him on. In Gideon’s hand, his phone gleamed with the intel he was receiving from the LVPD. “They’re installing roadblocks around the area.”

Hotch blinked, a thrum of something shock-cold working down his spine. “Large transports would be needed to move two wolves discretely,” he said distantly, the professional side of his brain kicking in. “Patrols should be sent to rest stops, truck stops, any heading out of state.”

“Or further into the state,” Blake commented. “It’s just desert and wolves there—if a pack was responsible for this, they could be hiding the missing wolves within closed pack lands. The largest pack lands are the most barren, with the increasing need to travel for resources. Desert lands.”

“But what motive?” JJ hissed, her scent thick with stress. They all smelled of it, even the humans. Fear and stress, except Hotch, who was numb. He knew they were noting that. Could feel Rossi’s eyes on him.

“Hate crime,” he listed coolly. “Slavery. Secondary revenge—a wolf did them wrong and now they’re striking out at others. We don’t have bodies, though. We don’t know what’s happening to those taken. Without knowing that, it’s hard to assign motive.”

Rossi gritted his teeth hard enough that Hotch heard them click. “Mm,” he agreed after a beat. “But I don’t think they’re expensing them a holiday to Australia, do you?”

“North?” asked Blake quietly. “Wolf lands. If they get taken across the northern border to Efisga, they’re out of reach. We have no jurisdiction there, and the Efisgans are social anarchists. They won’t cooperate with us.”

Hotch froze. It was possible. Unlikely that a large transport would make it across the border without being stopped, but if they did…

“Wait, what happens to them if they get taken across the border involuntarily?” JJ asked, bolting upright. “The Efisgans can’t allow that—any wolf crossing that border has their citizenship revoked. It’s a _secession_ from the US _._ They won’t be allowed to return.”

“They can’t cross with two unconscious wolves and not be noted,” Rossi said, his posture stiff. “There’s never been a case of involuntary secession, the Efisgans keep that border watertight to ensure no wolves are being detained by our forces once they’ve got a paw over. And our border patrol isn’t exactly slack.”

“Sanctuary lands,” Gideon was musing, his brow furrowed. “Social anarchists with a Constitution that contains only one article: ‘no wolf will ever be turned away from claiming sanctuary on these lands.’ The political fallout if they do cross…”

“An absolute clusterfuck,” Rossi ended bluntly. “But they _can’t_ cross. It’s never happened.”

“August 1981,” Hotch murmured. “Lionel Waters recrossed the Efisga/US border on a temporary visa to visit his estranged wife and sons. Resulted in a custodial kidnapping where he smuggled the boys back over the border and then claimed sanctuary. Efisgan border patrol honoured that claim and threatened an uprising if US forces followed to retrieve the boys. The case was never resolved, the boys are still listed as defected with complete revocation of citizenship, and it inspired a wave of new laws removing all legal and parental rights from wolves who cross the border without their dependants.”

“Hotch…” JJ said softly.

“We’re wasting time,” he snapped. “We need to find them before we start throwing around ‘what ifs’ that might not even come to pass.” He turned on the spot, pacing up the aisle and shaking away the itchy coat feel that he was in the wrong skin. The suppressants weren’t working. They never did, this close to February. He’d always come into season early, _always_ , and suppressants could only do so much. He knew it was affecting his temper and his ability to remain focused. It was a mixed blessing that he knew his focus would return. Extreme stress would halt a season in its tracks. It was a weird offshoot of a thought, intrusive in its uselessness, but a small part of him thought of Jack searching longingly for the pups that came with the snow and grimly noted that the loss of a pack wolf would almost certainly ensure there wouldn’t be a single pup within the next year. The shockwaves from this would extend beyond the two teams of agents around him. It didn’t really help right now with keeping his emotions in check, but it would if they didn’t solve this today. This week.

That was a cold thought. The newscast played again, identical. _The only thing authorities seem to be able to agree on is this: no victims have yet been recovered._

Morgan muted it. “What do we do when we hit the ground?” he asked again, the fourth time.

This time, Hotch answered him, savage in his conviction: “We find them.”

 

* * *

 

They split up. The human team led by Gideon moved towards the Sandstone Wolves’ pack homes, armed and tetchy with the state police at their backs. They’d found the SUV in the parking lot at the ingoing outpost. No keys or cell phones inside. Garcia was already tracking their GPS. The wolves, their own escorts ranging warily behind, hit the desert.

_Spread out in a V formation,_ Rossi ordered them. _First to find their scents, call out._

First was JJ. She howled, long and low, and began to run. The trace was fresh, lingering in the air as well as the ground. Not even nine hours old.

Too old. They still hadn’t made contact.

_Emily!_ Hotch called, his accompanying howl high and long. It was a throbbing _warning_ call, and it would send every wolf in earshot scurrying towards them. He followed JJ and Rossi as they weaved back and forth, noses to the trail, and kept the baying call up. _Emily!_

_They were heading pretty firmly east,_ JJ said suddenly, snapping her head to the side. _Until here. They veer away. Aaron?_

_Watch your backs,_ Rossi warned them both, calling the same warning back to the state wolves fanning out to search the area. _I smell blood._

Horror sunk into Hotch’s bones. It wasn’t much blood. Traces. But she wasn’t answering his calls, and she wasn’t any kind of presence in his mind, and she wasn’t _here_.

He padded numbly towards the scent, Rossi at his side. The trail they were following abruptly changed—calm and focused before now, it was suddenly shot through with acidic adrenaline. Paw prints on the ground bit deeper as a larger wolf picked up speed. Emily’s prints, he knew, as he looked down at them. Rossi jogged ahead, tracing the scent trail despite it veering away from the coppery stink.

_Aaron,_ he said brusquely, ten feet away and moving back around in a veering circle. _I can’t follow this. It’s erratic. Both their paths cross and circle, and their scents are strange._

Hotch ignored him. He leapt a bush, his breath fogging in front of his mouth. In the distance, he heard a howl as the pack wolves finally started answering their calls. But that didn’t matter, because beyond this craggy rock was another splash of blood. He nosed at it, finding a tuft of black fur that stunk of pain wedged between two rocks. Ants swarmed it, feeding from the chuck of skin attached. Torn out roughly.

He moved on. There was an outcropping ahead, looming above. He looked up, shook his fur out, padded around it. Here, he picked up what Rossi was talking about.

Unlike Rossi, he recognised it.

Rossi found him there, his eyes closed and mind humming as he reached out desperately for a mind he knew he wasn’t going to find. _The kidnappers are drugging their captives_ , he said with a calm he didn’t feel, knowing that the state wolves were keeping their distance from the building rage simmering in his chest.

_We know this,_ Rossi said carefully, sniffing around the rock. _Three other wolves here, at least. I can hardly tell it’s such a fucking mess of… fear. Pain. They were hurt, and this blood isn’t just theirs. Aaron? Are you listening?_

_They’re drugged,_ Hotch repeated, swallowing hard. His tail bristled, high over his back, his claws biting into the sand as he tensed. _Darted. I think. There’s fur and skin back there. If they tried to dart her, Emily would have torn it out. If they’re drugged, we can’t find them. They won’t be able to shift. We…_

He stopped. JJ was picking her way over the rocks, her eyes cold and skin pimpled from the chilly winds. Human, despite the dangerous footing for delicate feet instead of hardened pads. And she was holding something.

“Emily’s tags,” she said, holding her hand out palm up. Wearing nothing but her tags around her neck and a blue glove on her hand, her bag bumping at her hip. Hotch stared blankly at the silver glittering on the latex glove. “They were down that bluff. No sign of…” Her voice hitched slightly. “…Reid’s. We tried to track their scent further, and walked right into a pepper bomb. Went through that, picked them up on the other side and we’ve got tire tracks leading east. Squad is chasing it down now but…”

_But_? Hotch asked, knowing she couldn’t hear him but aware his body language asked the question effectively enough that she’d know what he meant.

“There’s a highway over there. Once they hit that…”

Rossi shifted, standing upright and looking ill. “You got a radio in there?” he asked. “We need to make sure they’ve got those highways shut down. Roadblocks up. They’ll be looking to get as far away as possible as fast as possible. They have to know that taking two FBI agents is going to have this place swarming with LEOs. We need to contact the North border as well—get them to close it until we know for sure they’re not headed that way. Hotch?”

Hotch stared at the churned-up dirt, reciting the story that it told. A shallow dip where one of his people had fallen. Kick marks. A fierce fight. Drag lines, marred by the wind. They’d be gone soon enough. Just like Reid.

Just like Emily.

_Aaron._ Rossi had shifted again, padding carefully closer as JJ radioed the information in. He’d have to contact Strauss, if Gideon hadn’t already, to get a team in to replace them. They were compromised. Call Jessica. Call Elizabeth. Nine hours out of contact. They could find her. They hadn’t found a single body yet. If they _were_ , somehow, impossibly crossing the border…

They weren’t going to find her.

_Aaron!_ Rossi pushed into his face, fangs bared. _Stop it. You’re panicking. We’ll find them. Prentiss doesn’t take shit from anyone and Reid’s the smartest man, or wolf, I know. Snap out of it, because they’re going to get a message to us and we need to be ready to receive that message. Understood?_

_Understood,_ Hotch replied, turning away from the tracks. Emily needed them calm right now. Reid, too.

There’d be time to react later. For now, he shoved his emotions aside and got to work.

 

* * *

 

Five hours after hitting Nevadan soil, they were pulled from the case. Allowed to stay, but only because their expertise made them essential as the countdown ticked. The net around the area closed in, search parties of humans and therianthropes alike sweeping through the desert for any sign. They found nothing. Either the abductors were laying low, or they’d already slipped through the roadblocks. Carried their captives out of their pack members’ reach, while their pack stood around uselessly repeating the same facts about abduction to a shifting room of LEOs and searchers.

They brought wolves in for questioning. Among them: William Reid.

“It’s more than my job is worth letting you two in here,” the captain said when Gideon and Hotch stepped into the tightly packed viewing room staring down on the interrogation. “But…” He was a therianthrope. Hotch scented. Coyote. Their pack bonds weren’t as strong, they were mistrustful of wolves, but they understood the pull. The need to protect. He let them stay.

“I should be out there searching!” William roared, his eyes blazing and face twisted with the same shake of anger that kept trying to worm its way through Hotch. “He’s my son, and you people can’t find him—I can!”

“Unless you were involved,” the sergeant questioning him said blandly, her facial expression empty. “Call logs indicate that you were the last person to contact Dr. Reid before his disappearance. You were the one who summoned him to the search.”

“Yes, because he alerted me that there was a possibility that these _are_ abductions,” William responded, standing and pacing despite the sergeant’s warning for him to sit down. “I’ve spoken to the teams in that area. All of them state that there was no way that anyone who _shouldn’t_ have been there was there!”

“So, they were taken by someone from your pack?” the sergeant replied, and William went pale.

“I…” he stammered, and Hotch examined the bare resemblance of William to his son and wondered where his loyalties stood. Blood, or pack. “Is it…” He breathed harshly, something resigned and hurt sinking into his features. “… possible that this _wasn’t_ an abduction?”

Someone growled. It might have been Hotch. The captain sure glared at him like it was.

“Are you suggesting that Dr. Reid and Agent Prentiss left of their own volition?” the sergeant clarified, her head tilting to carefully examine the man’s body language as he responded.

William heaved in another breath, a trickle of sweat working down his throat. But his eyes were clear, locked on the woman sitting across from him. They didn’t slip away as he spoke, his body language said _truth_. “His brother went rogue. Left for the North in the same manner—he staged foul play so we wouldn’t follow him and bring him home. The boys have always been… unstable. If Spencer wanted to leave, without incurring backlash for taking a member of a different pack with him… well, he always did idolise Ethan.”

Silence. Hotch could feel the doubt creeping in, the whispering _what if_. The common saying, on the tip of everyone’s tongues when they heard about a wolf leaving or breaking a law: _it’s in a wolf’s nature to eventually go rogue._ Despite his past, he refused to subscribe to that belief.

“They didn’t run,” Hotch said coldly, and walked out as the sergeant stepped from the interrogation room. Her eyes narrowed when she saw him, blocking the door with her body, but he had no interest in talking to the lying _worm_ inside. The man didn’t know anything. Nothing about his son, nothing about this case, nothing about _Emily_.

“Aaron!” Gideon called, following him up the hall and grabbing his arm. Hotch whirled with a muted snarl, and Gideon didn’t flinch. “You need to consider that—”

“They did not run away together!” Hotch spat, knowing people were looking at them, not _caring_. “Emily is with _me_ , Jason. We’re together. That’s how I know!” Shock and derision would follow that, he was sure. _Dating a subordinate,_ he imagined them gossiping. _Well, no wonder it all went wrong._

“I know,” Gideon said calmly, jerking his head to a nearby empty room. Hotch allowed himself to be led in, away from watchful eyes, slamming the door shut. “You think I don’t know about you two? I know, of course I know. It’s my job to know. Despite the Bureau’s stance on us being separate halves of the same unit, I hold no such beliefs. We _are_ the BAU, Aaron, collectively. Both our teams. That’s why I took Reid all those years back—to show them that if one wolf could cross those bounds, why not the rest?”

Hotch stared, nonplussed. “I have no idea what this has to do—” he started, but Gideon shut him down with a flick of his hand.

“It means I’m on your side,” he said intently, latching the cold-eyed focus he’d perfected to an uncanny level on Hotch’s face. “Reid and Prentiss are _my_ people. But you need to know that this is what we’re going to be fighting, Aaron. Words like that? William Reid is a fool. He’s a goddamn fool, because those words are going to work their way into people’s minds and stick. They play off a stereotype, multiple stereotypes, and stereotypes exist for a reason. They’re easy. They allow the primitive brain to group inputs into threatening or non-threatening.”

“Threatening,” Hotch murmured. “Like twelve-years of unsolved abductions.”

“Or non-threatening like two wolves running away to escape a jealous pack leader,” Gideon finished, and Hotch realized where he was going with this. “Why would Reid run? Think like a fool. Like William. What does he believe?”

Conservative. Old-fashioned wolves, old-fashioned ideals. “To flee from me,” he said finally, and pushed the anger down easily. “I’m in a position of command over them both, if I wanted Emily to myself and used that to bully a younger male and with the season oncoming… it’s an easier solution to swallow than a Ghost.”

“People like easy.” Gideon moved back to the door. “That’s what we’re going up against, Aaron. Don’t play to their rhetoric. You, more than anyone, need to keep your head.”

He kept his head. Barely, that first day. It got easier.

It only got easier because they didn’t find them.

Two weeks later, they were sent home. Two empty seats on the jet. The news casts whispered: _Just a case of_ _Romeo and Juliet: are the missing agents even missing at all?_ When they walked into the Bureau, humans and wolves side by side in their defeat, they walked into a silent room. Seven p.m. at night, the lights should have been dimmed. No one there but the cleaners and a last few agents scurrying to finalize reports. But the sixth floor, the domain of the human BAU members, was packed. Shoulder to shoulder agents standing in solidarity. Hotch stopped, stunned, and looked around. Wolves and humans, a notable divide between them and an uneasy kind of _this isn’t our place_ working through the wolf agents, but they _were_ there.

“None of us stopped looking,” said Anderson, stepping from the ranks of the wolves, his shoulders uncharacteristically straight. “The higher ups are pushing for a fast resolution.” A fast resolution here meant _accept that they left by choice._

“We don’t believe that Reid would do that,” said one of the sixth-floor agents, human and young and determined to believe in the right thing. “We _know_ Dr. Reid.”

“And we know Emily,” murmured the wolves, his pack one and all, and their eyes were on him.

Strauss lurked by Gideon’s office, but she left without a word.

He went home, buzzing with this show of support. Into an empty house where Emily’s scent still lingered. Jack with Jessica—distraught, Jessica had told him. As they all were. He paced the empty house and finally walked out into the backyard, looking across the snow strewn lawn. No howls sounded nearby, their pack silent. No one ran under the cloudy moon searching for company. No one let themselves be summoned by the spring’s call.

The season, for them, was over. None would answer it this year. He welcomed the clarity with numb resignation, and turned to walk inside.

He lay on her side of the bed and didn’t sleep at all.

 

* * *

 

Five months later, they received their message.

“On the twenty-seventh of January, Agents Spencer Reid and Emily Prentiss were listed as active missing persons in an ongoing investigation,” said the woman standing at the front of the FBI offices, every eye on her. Seemingly ignoring the low ripples of anger that were growing. “As of today, they are no longer considered missing. Their locations are known. This investigation is over and no more resources will be allocated. Thank you all for your time.”

Behind her, on the screen, the video message played. Muted, but someone had subtitled it during the initial investigation into its origins. Hotch stared at her and then at the video, unable to think past this moment.

_June 18 th, 2006,_ said the newspaper Reid had propped up beside him as he smiled brightly at the camera. A real smile. He looked… healthy, if thin. Calm, although Hotch could see lines traced around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before. Eyes that gleamed with a manic kind of focus, one that Hotch had seen the younger man wear before. When facing a puzzle or a case, something that he excelled in. He was dressed for cold weather, despite the summer outside.

Emily wasn’t there.

_“Our defection was consensual,_ ” said the subtitles. Hotch knew that if he hit unmute, Reid’s throaty voice would cheerfully intone the exact words, if he so wished to hear that more than once. _“We left by choice, covering our trail so no one would stop us from finding our goal in life. We have no interest in returning to a society who bond selfishly and hatefully solely in order to bring joy to themselves. Dad, believe us when we say that we are happy. We never meant to hurt anyone by our defection but we’ve made a home here, dedicated to serving our pack and our family. Please don’t tell Aaron where we are. He only serves his own interests and places his own desires before those of his pack. His leadership drove us away from those we love, his lack of respect for our wishes ensuring that we cannot return. If he sees this—as we know he will, for his jealousy is boundless—we want him to know this: We will not be torn apart. We will stand strong. And we will welcome our family into a world that will teach them what it truly means to be a wolf.”_

The video ended, skipped. Replayed. Stunned, Hotch said nothing as the murmuring began, eyes cutting suspiciously to him. He just watched the subtitles begin again.

_My name is Spencer James Reid, pair bonded to Emily Elizabeth Prentiss. We are not missing. We are not in danger. We left because we didn’t feel safe, so we could be together, and so we could dedicate our lives to our true pack with our unification. We are sending this to my previous family to reassure them that we are okay._

_Please leave us alone._


	8. Darkly Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Three: Chapter Eight to Eleven**

_“Why am I the only wolf here?” Emily slouched against the table, tracing her finger around the knotty bit in the middle of the scuffed wood. She snuffed. The knot caught all the best smells. Meats and flour and antiseptic, and she sneezed and blehed at it with her tongue out and mouth open, lips curled._

**_Smack_ ** _. The spoon rapped the table, inches from her hands, and Emily leapt up and back with a bark as Sef scolded. “Don’t do that,” he told her, shaking the spoon at her nose. “It’s doggy. Don’t be doggy. Your mother would throw a fit if she saw you doing that.”_

_“But why?” Emily grumbled, inching back to the table. “I see other wolves and they have families. Packs. They say you gotta have a pack. No wolf runs alone.”_

_“You had siblings,” Sef said, his mouth turning down. “God bless them.”_

_“They don’t count,” Emily said heartlessly. Well, they didn’t. Dead wasn’t gonna do her much good. “They didn’t even breathe.” But she did care, a little. Maybe those nameless siblings would have played with her or taught her tricks or even fought with her. More fun than running alone. “I breathed,” she added smugly, because she may as well be proud of that one thing._

_“Litters are a hard task for a mamma to bear,” Sef murmured, and turned away. Emily took the chance to snuff again. She never really understood the man. He smelled of wolf but never ran as one, and always knew if she’d been in things she shouldn’t or if she’d been wearing her fur when she wasn’t allowed. “Your mamma will be home soon. Go get pretty for her, Little Paws.”_

_Emily scowled. She didn’t wanna. Always be pretty, always be polite, never be doggy. Don’t say wanna, say want to. Don’t say huh, say pardon. Brush your hair, put your fur away, don’t bite. And don’t get attached, we’ll move again in a month._

_Bah._

_“Fine,” she said snippily, and pranced to the door on her toes. Her dress caught on the handle, tugging her back, pinching her arm. “Ow,” she yelped, and slapped at it. “Ow, ow, Sef, help!”_

_But he watched her blankly, and she whimpered, **help**._

_“Settle down,” he said, wiping his hand on his apron. “Shh, shh. Settle, girl._ Just a little pinch and you’ll be okay…”

Emily whined, sandpaper eyes opening to find herself curled and floating. She wiggled, eyes tearing painfully. They’d nose-blinded her. Thick mentholated topical cream across her delicate nostrils and muzzle, burning the skin. She tried to lick at it and moaned as it seared her tongue, thick and camphoraceous. Tried to get her bearings. Laying on soft bedding. That was the floating. Hands on her. Bars. She craned her neck back and saw brown overhead. The roof, not a cage. Bars around her, open-top.

_Aaron. Aaron…_ She reached and reached but the drifting ocean feel remained. No shore in sight now, the lights getting dimmer.

_Aaron…_

But he was gone.

“Careful. Get that IV in, she’s rousing. How’s the male?” A pinch. It was cold and pulling inside her and then it was warm and she drifted. A distant growl, yelp, a fading voice… “There we go… okay, she’s going. Is he under?”

“Bastard nipped me… _there we go, Little. You’ve torn your dress, silly thing. Never mind. Go get changed and I’ll mend it before your mamma even sees.” Sef rubbed her arm around the pinching, soothing the ouch. “You’re a good lass, to not fuss at a bit of blood.”_

_She smiled. For all his weird stuffiness, Sef was her friend. He’d take care of her. Turning to go to her room, the house rattled. Rolled. She wailed and pressed back, against the warmth of his body. “Something is wrong,” she cried in terror, and heard Mamma calling out to her._

_“Emily! Emily, come here. You’re in trouble again, girl.”_

_“No,” she whispered, but Sef shoved her forward with a pat on her shoulder and she stumbled through the dining room they never used—it’s for **guests** , Emily, and don’t walk on the rug, please—and through the wide-open doors into the front hall. Marble and cold, she hated how it always skittered her paws out. But today she was barefoot and human, her dress gone. Naked and uncertain and the ground throbbed under her. “Mom?” she called, her voice rough. Older. Where was Sef? She wobbled and the world wobbled with her. Head aching, she gagged._

_Drunk, she thought, and her knees cracked wetly on the marble ground. Drunk._

_Outside, winter pressed in. Sef was supposed to be here… he had been, that night. The night she’d fucked it all up. He’d come and picked up her, brought her home, despite the fact that she wasn’t his Little Paws anymore, but instead a stink-furred stranger who’d taken his little girl and thrown her to the dogs._

_“Sef,” she sobbed again, looking at her hands. Stood and stumbled up the stairs to her room, swinging the door open and faltering through to the mirror stretching along one wall. A wild girl stared back, muddied and dirty and wide-eyed. Coltish legs, a flat stomach, too-long arms. She was a puppet of a girl with all her strings tangled, pupils huge and dark in the pale shape of her face. Bruises on her arms where thumbs had pushed in. The ground pistoned under her and she ached hollowly, pressing her sticky legs together and shivering with the remembered feeling of being broken open and left apart._

_“Oh, Emily,” said her mom, leaning against the door with a weary shake of her head. “You’ve messed up again.”_

_“No,” Emily stammered, trying to soothe her hair back. She could smell sweat. Masculine sweat. It made her whimper and purr all at once. “I didn’t mean to. He was… he was so **much** , Mom. And I couldn’t think…”_

_Elizabeth walked away, looking disgusted. “I told you,” she called back over her shoulder. “Don’t drink as spring thaws. Your body thinks it knows best, and alcohol shatters what little judgement you have. Stupid girl.”_

_Emily closed her eyes, shivering shivering shivering_ and someone was stroking her ears down flat. “Your body knows best,” the person said. “Come on. Stand up for me.”

_No,_ Emily thought groggily, her head swimming. She was rocking with the wind. _Get off me_. But the hand was soothing, soothing… tracing warm, gentle lines down her skull and she tremored under the touch, wanting more and less and everything.

“Just a little stand-up, that’s it,” the voice kept on. Hands under her chest, and Emily felt herself lifting like her weight was nothing. Like in this new world she was weightless and so easily tossed aside. Her legs felt uncertain. They barely held her and she tipped forward, top-heavy. Something beeped nearby, some pressure on her ear but when she shook her head it threw the world out of whack. The hands were back, rubbing the side she’d been laying on. Strangely numb, she felt, sluggish. “Okay. Good girl. Down now, other side. Careful. Don’t catch…”

She laid back down, _good girl. “Who’s that?” she asked, looking up to find Jason Gideon of all people walking through the doors of the basement offices with a lanky looking wet-behind the ears wolf trudging in behind him. “New hound for us, huh?”_

_“Looks like a sneeze would blow him over,” Rossi said, and Elle burst out laughing._

_“New chew-toy for Hotch!” she said with a snigger, her brown eyes wicked. “Poor thing. Look at him. He’s a kitten.”_

_Emily just smiled and watched curiously as Hotch stepped out of his office to greet the two men, shaking hands with them both. The boy—barely a boy, but definitely not a man—quailed back as soon as he copped a scent of Hotch, his eyes huge and worried. Something twisted in her gut, seeing the same concern on Hotch’s face. That wasn’t subservience to a strange new wolf. That was fear. Someone had cuffed this pup in the past. With a surge of movement, she was up and striding towards them. “Emily Prentiss,” she introduced herself, thrusting her hand out with a smile and a wink. The boy took it warily. His palm was wide and warm. “Resident secret super-nerd. What’s your specialization?”_

_A shy smile, his shoulder relaxing. “Spencer Reid,” he replied, rubbing his hand on his pants uncertainly, like her skin had weirded him out. Or like he wasn’t used to touch._

_That feeling she understood perfectly._

_Spencer,_ she tried again, the name strange. _Spence…_ A touch. A flicker of awareness and she growled and tried to move towards it, sensing something pulling her away. _No,_ she snarled at that something. _Fuck off. He’s my friend. Let me go, let me go, **let me go!**_

“Woah!” someone swore. “Hey, we’re going to need more propofol over here—she’s up again.”

“How? Her IV is still full… jeez, her heartrate is going nuts.” A shrill mechanical shriek narrated his words, and she flattened her ears back against the racket. Recognised it. Cardiac monitor? Hospital? She tore her eyes open. No. Not a hospital. The bars again, the dank smell of being cramped up for too long. Musty sheets. She writhed, trying to stand with legs that didn’t work anymore, ignoring the hands that pushed her down. _I’ll rip your hands off,_ she promised them. _As soon as my jaws work again, I’ll take you apart, you assholes!_

“I’m going to give her a shot,” someone distant was saying. _No_! “Drop her in a hole, that’ll shut her up for a bit.”

_Spence!_ She reared up, cracking her muzzle on the bars of the cage. Caught sight of a girl—a young woman, barely Spencer’s age for fuck’s sake—staring down at her worriedly, her eyes skittering away. She followed that gaze, saw a snap-glimpse of more bars. _You bitch!_

“Wait,” the girl was saying, stepped back. “Okay, don’t wait. Dose her. But she’s scared—maybe if we move—”

The hands nipped. They bit first and she dropped with a groan as the teeth slipped under her ruff and into the muscle with a shot of burning cold. Everything went bleary, disconnected. But she was awake; this wasn’t like the IV.

It was so, so much worse.

_I’m awake_ , she tried, and her brain worked. Eyes open. Her body wasn’t hers anymore. It was the same puppet body of her dreams, just wolfier. And there were people around her, moving, things thumping. Grunting. She tried to shift to a more comfortable position, her neck stiff. Tongue drying in the harsh air as her jaws hung open stupidly, her eyes burning with the need to blink.

_What did you do to me?_ she tried, but nothing listened. Not her ears, not her paws, not her eyes or her brain or—

It turned dark for a moment as the people converged, and she rolled as hands touched and teased and pulled and _“You’re leaving.” It was an accusation. Spencer winced at it, packing his desk with shaking hands._

_“Agent Gideon has offered me a place on his team,” he explained, and she didn’t need to have her fur on to practically smell the relief he was extruding. Never comfortable around other wolves, his scent was a constant mix of anxiety and fear and it had the whole office on edge. If he wasn’t so fucking smart, Hotch would have had him transferred weeks ago, just to save them all the years he was shaving away with his relentless worrying. But there was nowhere else for him to be transferred. Wolves worked here, and nowhere else._

_At least, until now._

_“With the humans?” she said, stunned. “You’re going to be their sniffer dog. What the fuck, Spencer? Why would you want that?”_

_He looked at her oddly. “Isn’t that what you all want?” he asked, dead serious, and walked out. Not even a goodbye._

_“He’s still in our pack, right?” she asked Hotch, barging into his office. “You’re not throwing him to the humans?”_

_“If he wants to remain with us, he’s welcome,” Hotch reassured her, frowning slightly. “We don’t abandon our own, Emily. So long as he doesn’t turn on us.”_

_“He won’t,” she said, and_ burrowed her muzzle into his fur. Breathed it in. Comfortingly familiar and sweet-scented. Something tight in her chest eased, some relaxing of muscles knotted hard. She felt sleepy and content, warm against his body. Maybe that was why the words slipped out: _I love you._

_Huh?_ The response was strange. Deep and husky but not the _expected_ deep and husky. _Em, don’t move. Don’t let them know you’re… awake. They’ll…_ It trailed away. She cracked open gunky eyelids to realize the fur she was nuzzling against was tawny instead of black, coarse instead of thick. His eyes were open, hazel and locked on her, but they were emptying fast as blue-gloved hands snicked a fresh bag of whatever they were knocking them out with into the IV line set into his foreleg. A bandage wrapped it, stained rust-red where he’d struggled and torn the skin. The other leg was shaved in the same spot, bloodied. He’d torn it, too.

He’d fought them.

_Don’t go,_ she was horrified to hear herself plead. _Spence. Please wake up_.

His eyes closed, chest slowing. Gone.

Alone again.

_How long have we been here?_ she asked no one in particular, breathing in bitingly cold air. Tried to shift, blinking sluggishly. Her face felt numb. A blanket spooled over her shoulders. Huh? Had that been there before? She wiggled slightly, peering at Spencer. He wasn’t laying the same way he had been before she’d blinked. His muzzle was on her paws, his white-socked foot curled possessively around her leg. Sleeping, still. The blanket had slid off him, revealing the IV—shifted again, it was in his chest now. Both forelegs bandaged, and the cushions under them were brown and speckled with blood. Old blood. Another tube curled from between his hind legs, a sensor clipped onto his ear with wires leading out of sight.

_Oh god,_ she breathed, and thought of home. _We’re so fucked, Aaron. So fucked._

But there was no reply.

There was nothing she could do. This was a moment of sanity in the madness. The drugs would drag her under again soon. She watched a frosty breath huff slowly from his parted jaws and painstakingly pushed away the exhaustion to inch her way over to him and huddle close. He was warm, his heart a steady tap against her side. _Alive alive alive_ that heartbeat said with every determined pulse, beating along with the rhythm of the world rocketing by underneath them.

_Just don’t leave me,_ she asked him. _Stay with me._

**_Stay with me_ ** _, he was begging, ripping them open with every whimpered word. **Please, love, please… stay with me. Don’t go!**_

_Haley didn’t reply. Or if she did, they didn’t hear. His raw whine of fear tore through the silent hall, the clustered wolves and humans of their familial pack pressing closer together outside the room where she was dying. Outside the hospital, she knew the outer rings of their pack would all have their attention turned to this battle; not close enough to be here today in case of the worst, but close enough that the worst would impact them savagely._

_Emily paced and paced and paced, in her fur because it felt cowardly to shift away from the pulsating ripples of **agony** rolling through their pack. There was a flicker nearby. An alien presence. She lifted her muzzle to it. Some others noticed; no one cared beyond a slight ripple of hackles lifting at the intrusion on their grief. Rossi watched her walk towards it and didn’t say a word._

_She found Reid hunkered in the outside hall. Here, humans skirted him warily, unused to the sight of a wolf in its fur outside of the Therian Wing._

_His words were private, only for her mind, as she stood looking down at him with an impassable distance yawning between them. In that distance, his leaving their pack for the human team, his refusal to run with them, his utter condemnation of everything they’d offered him. Her anger._

_Her sadness._

**_She’s going to die,_ ** _he sent, his voice thick with grief that made no sense if he didn’t care about them, and he obviously couldn’t care for them or he wouldn’t have left… **Eclampsia in therians is almost certainly fatal this late term.**_

**_I know,_** _she sent back helplessly. His words hurt. They hurt like she was hurting, the removed grief of someone watching a beloved family member go through an unstoppable tragedy. **I don’t know what to do.**_

**_Me neither,_ ** _Reid admitted, standing and pausing for a moment before stepping forward and huddling against her chest. He didn’t speak again, and she closed her eyes and accepted the comfort he was offering her until the time came to pass that she was needed elsewhere._

_They both knew when Haley died._

_Emily felt it. And Reid felt her shudder with the pain of it, her pack shuddering with her._

_It was a knife through their collective soul. A hot blade tearing them with a sneering **she’s gone** and they all raised their heads as one and howled with Aaron as his heart shattered on the silent delivery room floor. Emily howled once—likely she scared people, she didn’t really care—before dropping her head back onto Reid’s wiry fur, closing her eyes and slinking close to Aaron’s mind. He let her. Obscenely, he let her, and she could feel his thrumming heart as shock crippled him. Could feel the pain trying to rip him in two. Feel the unfathomable loss as something cruel reached into the most secret and treasured parts of his core and squeezed until his heart was left cauterized by the relentless, burning pressure. _

**_Haley, Haley_ ** _, he sobbed, twisting out of his mind to flee to theirs. Emily cringed back from him, repulsive in that moment when he needed her. Too frightened of death to face it._

_Rossi was there. **It’s okay,** he called, holding Aaron close to his self. **Oh, Aaron. It’s okay. We’re here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.**_

**_You’re not alone,_ ** _the pack chorused. They weren’t using words. It was a soundless feeling, declaring: **we’re here**. The first feeling any pup knew, the first they broadcasted with bright new minds as they were shoved unceremoniously into the world, wet and gasping. **We’re here. We’re alive.**_

_And Emily felt it then. A whisper. **I’m here. I’m alive.**_

**_Look at me._ **

_She blinked, slipping away from Reid and back into the wing, down the hall towards those closed doors. Listening intently. Rossi was already standing, his white-grey sides heaving with surprise and ears cocked forward._

**_The pups,_ ** _he gasped. **Aaron!**_

_And the pups—their minds fresh and bright in the cloud of death, replied: **I’m still here.**_

_Later, they’d be told—one pup. Only one. A litter of four, but only Jack survived. His siblings never breathed, taken with their mother. Emily was Aaron’s second, so she was the first to pad into the silent room that was empty of all but the memory of death and a great black wolf curled around his golden offspring._

**_They have to take him to feed soon_ ** _, Aaron said emptily. **He’s all I have now.**_

**_Not all,_ ** _Emily reminded him, because there was always pack, and lowered her muzzle to sniff at their newest member. **Hello, Little Paws. Welcome home.**_

“Well, hello there,” laughed a voice overhead, lifting the cage with a thump. Washed out blue sky above. Emily blinked and lost that sky when her head dropped back onto Spencer’s silent rump, the only certainty in this broken new world.

_Welcome home_ , whispered countless voices around her, and she slept. 


	9. Liberty Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She jerked awake to silence.

Frozen, she listened. Every sense intent on the world around her. Nose working, eyes locked onto the hazy blue of some soft-focus film blocking her vision, ear perked. The moment tensed and strained and snapped, and she heaved in a rattling breath that broke the muffled quiet. The world felt… muted.

She dragged herself up onto her fore paws, sluggish and woozy and with a gut ache to match the pounding tempo behind her eyes. The soft-focus blue slipped away. Pooled down her shoulders to cover her flanks. A blanket. She stared at it. Soft and fluffy, mink. Expensive. She breathed again and her stomach twisted.

Turning her head sent a grating sensation working in her ears as her equilibrium struggled to keep up with the motion. She examined her new surroundings. Blinking to keep it in sight, her body still fighting off the remains of whatever she’d been pumped full of to knock her out. She took stock: average sized room—Reid could probably tell her exactly how big—square with two glass doors set into the walls. One was ceiling to floor, set on a loose hinge easily nudged open, a hint of a pastel green tiling on the wall behind. A bathroom?

That didn’t bode well.

The other was black, thick shutters drawn. Perhaps leading outside. Buttons set into the wall beside it, at nose height. She wiggled up, realizing she’d been laid out in a twin-mattress sized depression set into the wooden floor. Cushioned thickly, lined with blankets. She pressed her paws deeper into the soft surface and felt warmth pushing up at her from underneath. Heated. Behind her, a small alcove with dim lighting and a thick rug extended back just far enough that one person could curl comfortably into the space, the walls set with bookshelves. Filled with books.

Those books terrified her. That, and the heated bed, the overall intense friendliness of the place… it screamed _permanent residence_.

There was a door in the wall opposite the possible outside exit. Emily looked at that next. A normal door, just like any other. Made of wood—she assumed it was a lot thicker than it seemed—set so flush into the doorframe that she wasn’t sure she’d even get a whiff of the hall outside if she set her nose to it. Most notable about it however, wasn’t what the door _had_. It was what it was lacking.

Slowly, horror sinking into her and setting every hair on her body on end, she looked back down at the tightly furled shape of her co-worker. _There’s no door handle_ , she told the unconscious wolf, her gut tightening. A warning in her throat, a trickle of saliva. She was going to be ill. Likely horribly so, if the ache moving lower and settling as a hard knot in her bowels was any indication. Reid didn’t react, his eyes shut and his sides moving listlessly. Ignoring the pain and the nausea, she painstakingly inched closer to him, swaying like a drunk on the too-soft surface, and tugged the blanket from his shoulders with her teeth.

_Just checking you out,_ she reassured him, swaying some more as her body pitched a fit. It felt like the world’s cruellest hangover. Like that moment of the night after drinking heavily when she was done with being drunk but being drunk wasn’t done with her yet. _Cos I don’t feel so chipper and you don’t look that good either._

He didn’t. Mouth gaping loosely, she could see the white-sharp gleam of his canines curving smoothly into pallid gums. When she bit at his ruff and tugged it upwards, the skin was reluctant to move back into place. His coat stunk of blood and sweat and chemicals and sick wolf, his forelegs prickly where the fur had started growing back around the ragged tears where the IV had ripped from his skin. They’d partially shaved his chest, the white blaze missing. For some reason, that infuriated her.

But she had to get up. Her body was warning her that something was going to give soon and, despite the barest tang of urine in the bedding suggesting it was probably too late for one of them, she wasn’t willing to lose that much of her modesty in front of him. One leg up. Then the other. The hind legs followed. Slow and stiff, she shuffled and barely managed to slide onto the wooden floor surrounding their sunken bed, wiggling like a puppy until all four limbs were under her once more.

It was mortifying. She was fucking mortified. And almost glad Reid was still unconscious.

_Come on, Prentiss_ , she told herself, flat on the ground with her chin burning with cold. The floorboards, unlike their bed, were not heated. She had a suspicion the overall temperature of the room they were enclosed in wouldn’t be comfortable at all without their fur. Not that she could find out—even thinking of shifting made her body scream in protest, the drugs remaining in her system making that impossible. _Get up. What would Rossi say if he saw you laying here like a log?_

One leg up. Then the next. Agonisingly slow. Limbs shaking under her. A buzzing in her head offset the tremble of her muscles as she levered herself up and took one shambling step forward. The glass door loomed, still so painfully far away. Another step. Focusing on moving…

Her nose bumped it. _Thunk_. She blinked, shook her head slowly, and looked into the enclosed room. It was exactly what she’d hoped/feared; a cheerfully tiled sunken wet room with a showerhead set into one wall easily activated by paws or noses. An eastern style squat toilet on the raised shelf at the back. Also adapted to being wolfish.

It was all painting a very grim picture for their escape.

_One problem at a time_ , she murmured. It felt like shouting into a void. Like there was no one here but her and the unconscious Reid behind her. A horrifyingly lonely feeling. She nudged the thick glass door open, slipping inside and barely getting her tail out of the way before it swung shut, and dealt with the most pressing problems. Excruciatingly. If she ever got hold of the fuckers who’d dosed her up…

Curled on the cold tiles after with her stomach still cramping but her bladder empty at least, a burning pressure in her abdomen announcing that her suffering wasn’t done yet, something nudged her mind. A hazy awareness, reaching out blindly for any comfort.

_It’s me,_ she told him, eyes closed and miserable. _I’m here._

What she received back wasn’t words or emotions but a garbled mess of distorted sensations that she winced away from, the cloudy thickness of the drug still sunk deep into his mind. He was panicking, trying to get up and unable to do so, and she didn’t have the strength to go to him. Thankfully, he passed out again quickly. And what did it say about her that she was grateful for that?

Time ticked by slowly. She hunched on the tiles, making frequent attempts to try to ease the pain in her stomach, dry retching every time with a combination of nausea and pain until relief finally came. Almost tumbling into the sunken shower, she bumped the middle button with her nose and groaned out loud as water thundered down onto her aching body, slumping under it and just letting the water pool around her. Occasionally she huffed air from her nose, bubbles popping around her muzzle as her airways cleared, eyes narrowed against the spray.

It shut off with a _thunk_ of pipes rattling after a certain time had passed. Water trickled loudly around her, gurgling down the drain, but she felt more alive. More human, despite her sodden fur. Dragging herself upright, she even managed to shake her thick coat dry and pad with relative steadiness up and out of the shower, using her nose on the inner handle of the foggy door to ease it open enough to slip out.

She blinked. Reid was sitting by the window, on his rump with his forepaws tucked up against his chest like a meerkat. The shutters were open, the outside world pitch black except for flurries of thick, gusting snow. His eyes cut to her, then back to the window.

_If you need the bathroom,_ she offered, shivering with embarrassment that he may have overheard her illness, despite being able to scent the same mix of pain in his sweat and sight it in the rigid posture of his spine.

_Ketamine withdrawal can cause dehydration,_ he sent back absently, eyes sweeping the endless black expanse outside the window. She padded over to him, leaving a wet trail of paw prints, fur getting heavier as the cold air layered into the water still dripping from her. _Hence the headache we’re both suffering. How much time has passed for you since Nevada?_

She tried to skim back over the misty past few hours. Hours, it felt, perhaps, but outside was dark and they’d been called out during the morning… she hazarded a guess: _could be a day. Day and a half if it’s night already. How far could they have taken us in that time?_

_Not far enough for this much snow,_ Reid replied, his emotions a tangle. She nudged him anxiously, trying to coax him towards the shower. His mind still felt skewed, sideways and lethargic, but she could feel him forcing the cogs to turn as he categorised their symptoms. _It has to be longer. Far longer. They used IVs on us. That’s long-term sedation. You smell of infection—it’s centred around your hindquarters. Blood in your urine?_

She winced. Goodbye privacy, until Hotch found them at least. _Yes._

_Urinary tract infections and mild incontinence are common side-effects of catheter removal,_ he said grimly, finally swivelling his head around to stare at her. _If they used urinary catheters on us, we were sedated for far longer than a day._

Appalled, she reeled back, ears flattening against her skull. The violation was immense, the snarl of anger/rage/shame that followed crippling.

_Emily_ , Reid coaxed, not done yet. _Look out of the window._

_At what?_ she snapped, still adjusting to the knowledge he’d just dumped at her. _Fuckloads of snow?_

He shook his head, eyes unfocused. _The horizon._

She looked. She couldn’t not. Kid was too clever for her not to take him seriously. Through the pitch of the night, across what looked like an endless expanse of snow, there was the barest hint of yellow lining the skyline. Fading as she watched. _Dusk then,_ she said, watching it dip away and leave black in its place. _So, we know what time it is, roughly. Good._

Reid stared at her. _No,_ he said quietly, looking back to the window. From the thick glass, cold radiated, and she backed away from it and suddenly wished he’d close the shutters and push the night away. _It’s not. I just watched the sun rise, Emily. You just watched it fall. I know where we are._

_Hotch is coming to get us,_ she said over top of him, shaking. Shaking because of the cold, she was sure, and not the haunted shape of his eyes or the rolls of horror she could feel coming off of him. _He’s coming for us. He just has to find where we are and—_

_He’s not,_ Reid replied, his voice a whisper. Empty of hope. _He can’t._ And he kept going, heedless of the fact that every word was sealing their fate. _This is the North, Emily. As far North as it’s possible to get, watching the end of the polar night. We’re in Efisga. And no one is coming for us._

* * *

It was mildly amusing that he ran the shower to cover the sounds of his own illness in the hours following, but not amusing enough to actually lift her out of a suffocatingly powerful sinkhole of depression. There was no escape. A cursory examination of the outside door proved that it did open, but outside was a white out of snow and she knew it would be death to go out there unprepared. If they did escape, they were over four thousand miles from home and most of that expanse was rugged, uninhabited wilds littered with packs of wolves who were under no obligation to help them, and may possibly even be against them.

Efisga had no cell towers. No internet services. A satellite phone might get them in contact with _someone_ , but it wouldn’t matter. There would be no retrieval, no rescue. US forces taking one step into Efisga lands was a declaration of war again therian kind, and the uprising would be immense, worldwide, and catastrophic. There were no roads. She had a vague awareness that there were cargo freighters that delivered supplies to the more isolated regions during summer, but in the dead of winter there would be no sneaking away on those. There were airfields, few and far between, but the settlements adjacent could be friend or foe. There was no way they were brought here by a singular being acting alone.

They were smack on the edge of a tundra. The frozen tip of their continent, enclosed by endless miles of flat, snowbound wasteland and permafrost. They had no idea what their captors wanted from them, if they were going to kill them or enslave them or what. If they ran, they’d be hunted down. There was no covering their tracks. They’d freeze. They’d starve.

No running. No hiding.

No escape.

As soon as the drugs worked through their systems, they shifted. Neither felt right in their fur. They’d been captured, violated, examined… Emily shuddered and wrapped one of the blankets tight around her body, huddled in the corner of the sunken bed. No clothes, she’d noted, and assumed that was another way to control them. They could wear their fur, but not being able to shift if they escaped for fear of being snap-frozen would stall any escape attempts.

“Emily?” Reid asked, his voice hoarse. He was pacing, toes turned up against the chill of the floor. A small vent overhead blew hot air into the room, but there was only so much it could do. She looked up at him towering overhead, his own blanket wrapped tight around his body and his eyes red-ringed with shock and stress. “Are you okay?”

She was saved from answering by a rattle and a _clonk_ as a hatch in the wall near the handle-less door dropped open. Reid whirled, the blanket gusting with the quickness of his movement and for a second flaring comically around his waist. They stared at the low hatch as the contents wafted a delicious scent into the room. The open door made a ramp for the bowls within to be slid down onto the ground if they were in wolf form.

Food. Emily stood shakily and narrowed her eyes at it. Two servings of what _looked_ and _smelled_ like beef and black bean casserole, two bottles of milk that Reid crouched down and picked up … and two small pill containers. Emily watched as Reid slid the food out, his mouth open and nostrils flaring as he scented, his eyes already skipping to the pill containers.

“What are these?” he called into the hatch. It was a closed box, the other side firmly sealed, and there was no answer. “We’re not taking mystery medication.” He tossed them back in, hunching back, the blanket slipping down and baring his shoulders. Emily eyed the burn and swallowed hard.

“Is it drugged?” she asked, inching forward and leaning her elbows on the floorboards. He shook his head in reply, curls bouncing. Her stomach gurgled at the scent of the food, reminding them both that neither had eaten in what could be—as impossible as it felt—a week, and both had spent the morning emptying whatever _was_ left in their bodies.

“Here,” he said finally, pushing the bowl to her. The spoon scraped on the floor as he shoved that over as well. “Eat slowly. They’ve given us a minute amount and it’s watered down, but your stomach will still cramp.” The hatch suddenly slammed shut. Reid skimmed his fingers over it to pry it open, unsuccessfully. Impenetrable once more. Against the cream of the paint, his fingers were pale white, the tips bluish.

“Spencer,” she said, sitting down properly and resting the bowl on her blanket-covered knees. “We’re still exhausted from whatever those fuckers gave us. We’re hungry. We need to rest so our brains can work properly, and you’re making _me_ feel cold. Come here and eat. Sleep.”

He glanced at her, his face taut. “I can’t rest,” he replied. “I need to… I don’t know, _something_. What are they planning, Emily? Why are we _here_ …”

“Eat,” she repeated, untucking the blanket and holding her arm out for him to curl against. Physical comfort. Now she was less stunned, she craved it. Some reminder that they were _alive_ , together, and that whatever these fuckers had planned for them hadn’t come to pass yet. The shock of being pulled away from her pack was beginning to shake her from her moorings, the sickly feeling of the oncoming season washed away and replaced with a cloying anxiety that screamed _go home_. “And sleep. And…” She trailed off, feeling her eyes beginning to burn again. “… I… I feel _alone_ , Spence. I can’t feel…”

Aaron. Jack. JJ. Rossi. Her pack. Her _family._ They were gone. There was nothing left for her to reach for, no steady mooring to pull her back. Even at her lowest, even as a teenager, she’d still felt _something_.

She might never see them again.

Appetite gone, she lowered her head and stared into the watery surface of her stew, the bowl hot against her knees. The bed dipped, shifted, and Reid lowered himself down next to her, putting his own bowl on the rim of the bed with the bottles of milk and readjusting the blankets so that they were covered by both, their bodies pressed together from thigh to shoulder.

The stew made a _plink_ sound as something wet struck it. She narrowed her eyes, staring more intently at the blurred surface, as he wrapped his arm around her and tugged her closer. A finger crept over her cheek, tugging hair away from where it was stuck to her skin and smoothing it back behind her ear. He pressed the spoon into her fingers, dipped it into the stew, let go.

“Eat,” he rumbled into her hair, mouth against her scalp. “I’m here. You’re not alone.” One handed, he brought his own bowl to his lap, balancing it on the dip of the blanket between his thighs. The other arm snuck lower, around her side, his hand resting on her hip. She could feel his heart beating steadily. Calm. He was calm.

They could do this.

She took a shuddering breath, wiped her face on the shoulder of the blanket, and brought the spoon to her mouth. They ate in silence. When they were done, the hatch clicked open again.

“We’re being watched,” Emily pointed out redundantly as Reid replaced the bowls and the empty bottles in the box and returned to the bed, snuggling back close. The cramp in her gut was back, her head aching again, body exhausted, and she laid down with him pressed behind her and a blanket wrapped between them to preserve some semblance of modesty. Despite the blanket, his arm still curled around her and her back was pressed to the steady _tha-thump_ of his continued heartbeat.

“Let them watch,” Reid mumbled, his body relaxing into sleep with obscene speed. _Maybe the food was drugged,_ she wondered, her own eyes sliding shut as the lights above flicked off. _Maybe we can do this…_


	10. Captive Concessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the snow stopped, they explored the outside of their narrowed new world. Emily hit the ground running, charging through the snow fearlessly as she raced as fast as she could away from the room that had been their prison for god only knew how long now. There was no way to tell time, the sun barely poking its nose over the horizon before slinking away, and she’d never been so disoriented. Snow flurried around her, blocking her vision of the surroundings, even if she’d been able to see through her cold-streaming eyes.

_Emily, be careful_ —Reid sent suddenly, but she still almost slammed into the concrete foundation of an easily ten-foot-tall wire fence. She skipped back, paws crunching on the icy surface of the snow, and stared up at it. The fence hummed ominously, her hackles rising at the whining sound. It wasn’t signed, but she wasn’t stupid. _It’s live._ She backed away from the electric fence, jogging along the perimeter until it brought her right back around a hump of snow to where their compound stood squat and firm. Reid paced at the corner where barrier met wall, his expression fixed beyond the boundary. _There are other doors,_ he pointed out, inching close enough to the fence that her muzzle curled back with worry. His fur stood on end, the static frizzing it amusingly around his ruff and chest, but she didn’t laugh. _I think, more fences. At least two more yards like ours. I can’t see properly…_

She sensed his distress, the vulnerability he was feeling without contacts or glasses. Ignoring his unease at the proximity of the railing, she padded up next to him and peered along the compound wall. She could count three yards like this before the snow masked her sight, one more than his vision had allowed him to see. _Three_ , she said softly, and probed towards those yards with her mind. No answer. She hadn’t expected one. Strange wolves in a terrifying situation… she wouldn’t be able to feel them reaching for her either. _So, we are trapped. There’s no climbing that, or digging out under it._

_Only way out is through there,_ Reid agreed, looking back at the door to their room. _What could possibly be their aim? We’re… our accommodation is far too comfortable for this to be a temporary stay. I don’t think they intend upon killing us._

_I’m almost disappointed,_ she growled, lifting her muzzle to taste the wind blowing over them. Fish, distant unfamiliar wolves… a thick tang of diesel fuel. _At least murder I can understand. Treating us to a snowy holiday? Less clear-cut._

A chill wind dropped. The bare half hour of sunlight they’d been enjoying—if they could call it that, the sky above crowded with grey washed clouds—dimmed as the sun dipped below the horizon again. They watched it fall, pressing together, before the cold became sharp enough that even they were persuaded back inside.

Shaking snow from her coat, Emily watched Reid beginning to pace. Claws clicking on the floorboards, he’d keep it up until their food was delivered and then he’d shout through the hatch to a faceless captor who never responded. And all Emily did was… watch. Try to think of a way out. Admit that maybe there wasn’t one. Try to think of a motive to their capture. Worry that maybe it was something terrible enough that it evaded her.

It didn’t help that the mild infection she’d been suffering through over what she thought might have been the last three days had faded away—the third meal they’d been given had included cranberry juice and three packets of Ural, which created a _lot_ more questions than it answered—but had been replaced with a series of vitamins, each labelled neatly with a list of ingredients. Emily had scanned hers as Reid had done the same to his, seeing nothing untoward on there. She still wasn’t going to be swallowing random pills though. But it seemed their intentions towards them, thus far, were to keep them healthy.

“You’re very calm _,_ ” Reid commented once, as she shifted out of her fur and took up residence in the library alcove with the blanket wrapped around them. Reid was oddly snuggly that day. She wasn’t surprised. They were in an insanely stressful situation with no one but each other and his reaction wasn’t unexpected… that didn’t stop her from twitching with surprise when he’d slid down next to her and pressed close, his expression guarded. The hatch had banged open ten minutes before, depositing hot chocolate in wide mugs, and she took hers gratefully as she paged through the books hoping for some hint to their fates within. “I can barely think and you’re just calm.”

“Compartmentalizing,” she said, closing the book and leaning her head back against the shelf wearily. “Panic won’t help us. If we get an opening, we need to take it.” Her skin felt itchy, wrong, and she stood and shed the blanket as the itchy feeling was replaced by a hot flush. “Urgh. Looks like they worked out the heating. I’m going to shower…”

Reid nodded, looking down and away with his cheeks flushing.

The shower didn’t help, and the day-night ground onwards without any change. So did the next.

And the next.

It became an endless stream of waking, eating, pacing, napping, chasing conversations in circles, back to sleep again. For the first few sleeps they kept apart, twitching awake constantly. She couldn’t even call them _nights_ , because with the day-night cycle hidden from them, they simply slept when they were tired. On the third, or fourth, she waited until he was asleep and then curled close, nose to tail with their sides shifting together in a pool of tan and black. They slept deeply that night.

The only thing that changed was their tempers. Trapped together for such an extended period, in a high stress situation, _everything_ rubbed her fur the wrong way. The big things first—he kept withdrawing from her mentally to pace endlessly around the cramped room, the relentless gait of his footsteps thudding into her brain and aggravating a now permanent headache. Smaller things followed—his showers were three times as long as hers and he always slunk into the bed after, leaving damp patches on the sheets. The shouting at the hatch when it opened, even though they knew no one would answer. His absolute refusal to talk about those they’d left behind, instead repeating that they needed to focus on the here and now. She gritted her teeth, hunkered down, and pushed away the frustration that felt like it was burrowing under her skin as time ticked by and left them adrift.

They talked about plans for escape. They debunked those plans.

He circled back around to them again.

And again.

_Food’s here,_ he said listlessly one day, and she barely even noticed he didn’t bother to shout this time. In his fur with his hackles lifted and his back turned to her, his scent was aggressively male and furiously tense. She couldn’t think through the stink of it crowding the room, couldn’t bear it on her skin from the bed they shared, _hated_ him for pressing it on her constantly. _Emily?_

She looked up from where she was pushed by the door with her nose to the seal, trying to smell anything but him. He padded closer, bringing with him that _scent_. She thought of Aaron and something inside her twisted and heated. Another rush of warmth.

She snarled, low and long with her muzzle curled. And he stopped, hazel eyes wide and stupid bat-ears slunk back against his skull. She watched his tail snap between his legs, his shoulders quivering with the effort not to slope down into a submissive posture at the explicit threat in her tone.

The anger went out like a light, and she was horrified by her conduct. _Christ, Spencer, sorry. I’m so sorry,_ she said, leaping up and nuzzling against his side. He winced away, placing the same determined distance between them that he’d used to before this. _I’m sorry. Looks like I’m not as good at compartmentalizing as I thought I was. Just… I’m not much of a space sharer._

He looked at her oddly, but didn’t push the subject. She followed him to the food, bolting hers down with an appetite that stunned her considering she’d never been more sedentary. When she finished, stomach still growling, it took every inch of determination not to glance longingly at Reid’s untouched plate of meat and veg.

_Take it_ , he said, pushing it to her with his white paw. _I’m not hungry_. She wanted to argue, but knew it was useless. He’d never give in, and her stomach wasn’t exactly being quiet about how ravenous she was.

Roughly a week, possibly more, into their captivity, she noted loose fur in their bedding.

_Take the vitamins_ , Reid said tiredly, examining his flank for bare patches. _It’s likely stress, but we can combat that a little. We need to be in peak condition in case they make a move._

It was a good point. After that, they took the pills, and Reid winced every time.

Neither slept well. Emily jerked awake at every muffled sound—not that there were many. They were almost always Reid breathing or shifting or getting up to use the bathroom, which didn’t help with their growing tension.  He kept shifting close to her during the night, then away, then back again, which was playing havoc with their captors’ inability to keep a constant temperature in the room. Half-dozing one night, overwarm and cranky with it, she felt a brush of a muzzle on her shoulder and reacted instinctively, lashing out with her teeth and feeling skin pinch as he yelped and skittered away.

The next three nights, he slept curled as far from her as possible and she felt guilty and vindicated all at once, torn between wanting him close and wanting him _as far as possible_ from her. Her dreams were fractured, rife with Aaron’s scent and his voice and a low howl in the distance summoning her to _run_ , and waking up to Spencer’s _everything_ was overwhelming.

She took to running around the fence-line everyday it was clear enough to do so, driving herself to exhaustion. It was on one of these runs she saw the other wolf; the first other living creature they’d seen since waking up in the room. Standing on the other side of the fence from her was a rangy grey wolf, long-legged and bristle coated with staring eyes and a patchwork muzzle. She skidded to a stunned stop, almost forgetting to scent him in her shock. _Male, stressed, in season—_ the last gave her pause. It was a dense, stubborn overlay to the wolf’s natural scent, which wasn’t unexpected considering the time of the year, but what _was_ unexpected was the vicious snarl of _get away_ that burst into her chest. The fiercely territorial reaction of a female wolf faced with an unwanted male during the vulnerable, tentative week before the season hit.

But she couldn’t be. Her season was _stalled_. There was no way she’d go through one here, away from her pack, _captive_.

The wolf took a step back, his nostrils flaring. A collar clinked—thick and tight around his throat and a dark iron colour that left her feeling uneasy—and he shook himself and turned to pad away.

_Wait!_ she called, and bounded closer to the fence. He didn’t pause. Could he even hear her? She cried: _Stop!_ and his gait hesitated.

There was a flurry of snow and a screaming bark of anger. Shocked, she leapt back and whirled on the threat, her own teeth bared. Reid skidded up, hackles up and tail stiffly held, his own posture belligerently territorial as he snarled at the strange wolf. Blinking, she pushed away her own instinctive reaction and reached for his mind— _Reid, stop! We can talk to him!_ but the other wolf had already turned tail and run. Reid stalked back and forth along the fence-line, his chest rumbling with a rhythmic growl and his eyes alien. She reached again, called his name, and he blinked and looked at her.

_What?_ he snapped, turning on her with all of that intensely focused antagonism. _He’s a stranger!_

_Spence,_ she said, feeling sick.

_Don’t turn this back on me,_ he was still raging. Winding in tight circles in the snow and leaving furrows under his paws. She scented: now she suspected it, it was clear. Masked by a chemical tang that she’d put down to their surroundings, but his usually light scent was impenetrable, rough, forceful. _You don’t know what he wants—he could be one of **them**!_

_We’re in season,_ she said quietly, and he froze on the spot, sides heaving. _Or, you are. I’m close._

_Impossible_ , he said, and strode away back to the room. _Impossible!_ he called back, breaking into a run. She followed him inside. Found him human and pacing again, his eyes huge and his skin shiny with sweat. The blanket lay abandoned. Despite the terror she could feel rolling from him, as soon as she walked into the room, he was half-hard and seemingly unaware of it.

“We can’t be,” he said. Turning on the spot, he twisted his fingers through his hair, leaving it stuck up in clumps. “There’s no way we’re…” He turned again. Once more. She began to feel dizzy, even as she watched his mind buzz over this. Suddenly, his head snapped to the shower, his eyes huge and the pupils strangely diluted. Fear or anger; she couldn’t tell through her own unease. “The shower,” he breathed, taking one halting step. “Our water supply. They’ve been dosing us through the water supply, our drinking water. It’s the only possibility, we’d _notice it_ in the food. The water here smells so much like metal it masks it…” She thought maybe he was talking to himself now, his words tangling and tripping. “A luteinizing hormone in the water supply, uncontrolled admission, no wonder we’re behaving erratically…”

She shifted, concerned by the speed of his words and the hitch to his breathing. “It’s okay,” she soothed, stepping forward, but he backed away from her so fast he almost slipped on the muddy wood. She remembered, suddenly, that this was likely his first season. “Spence, seriously. This doesn’t mean shit. We’re not _animals_. We retain our facilities throughout the season. We’re just going to be cranky and uncomfortable for a few weeks—that’s it.”

“You don’t understand!” he barked, reeling back. She could see it in his eyes now—he was panicking. About two heartbeats away from an anxiety attack aggravated by his system’s confused response to their unauthorised hormonal treatment. “I’ve been… the last few days…”

The last few days he’d shied away every time she’d gone near him, his eyes tracking her constantly. He hadn’t come to bed, instead reading the nights away until he’d passed out in the alcove from sheer exhaustion.

Eyes squeezed shut, he shook his head and backed away the last few stumbling steps until his shoulders smacked against the wall. “I’ve been having the most _awful_ dreams,” he finished, his cheeks and chest flushing red. “About… I didn’t know _why_. About you. And they’re…” He stopped, his eyes dangerously wide.

She winced. Ah. Yeah. That wasn’t… there wasn’t really anything to say that would make ‘it’s okay that you’ve been dreaming of fucking me’ sound not terrible. She paused, observing him carefully as his breathing stilled and his gaze turned fixed and focused as the hatch clicked and thumped open. Edging past him, she spotted two sealed bottles of water and grabbed them to thrust at him. Her hand nudged the pill containers and he surged up, snatching hers from under her palm and scattering them onto the tray. She watched as he unfolded the neat list of ingredients, paling as he read it.

“Yours is different,” he said, lips dark against a bloodless face. “Em, look. Folic acid. In these levels… these are _pre-natals._ ”

His words tripped into her brain before sinking home. She took one moment to be horrified. One moment, just one. And then, she moved past it. She had to. She had to, or she was going to crumple under the revulsion of this discovery. “They can’t force us,” she said, shaking her head. “They can’t _force_ us to…” The words wouldn’t come loose, clinging in her mouth and throat and choking her.

“They can,” Reid corrected bluntly. “There are plenty of drugs that will disassociate or disorient us, lowering inhibitions without removing physical capabilities. Notably, MDMA in a high enough dose will increase the production of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin leading to euphoria, increased energy and activity—”

His voice had taken on a numb kind of monotony, almost robotically chilling. “Reid,” she said, trying to shut him up. It didn’t work. _“Spencer.”_

“— triggering hormones that affect sexual arousal and trust and cause feelings of emotional closeness, elevated mood, and empathy. A dangerous cocktail when our brains will already be contributing large doses of those chemicals on their own as well as oxy—”

“Shut up!” she snapped. Surprisingly, he did, his jaw clicking. “There’s a way out of this. We’ve been treated kindly until now… and they’ve only been taking mated pairs. Maybe they’re unaware that we’re not pair-bonded.” The idea of _anyone_ , pair-bonded or not, being forced into a season without contraceptives to avoid the conception of pups… it turned her stomach. They were signing wolves’ death warrants. “Hey! Fuckers! We’re not mates! We’re not bonded—we’re just friends—co-workers! You can’t make us do this!”

Reid was silent, his eyes following her with a hollow kind of increasing misery as his brain kept throwing up worse and worse outcomes. She could see him doing it.

No answer. Not from the hatch, nor from the door they’d never seen opened.

“What do we do?” Reid asked, shivering. Almost on reflex, she turned to hug him, stopping herself just in time. That wouldn’t be kind to either of them right now. The fact that he was asking _her_ what to do—like he wasn’t the smartest one in the room—terrified her.

“How do we stall a season?” she asked him helplessly.

“Stress, illness, medication, starvation,” he said, looking at the food cooling on their plates. “We can use snow to hydrate, ineffectually. But I’m already…” He shuddered again, and even her human nose picked up the twist in his scent as he sunk down and drew his knees to his chest in a painfully despondent posture that she knew was half for comfort and half to hide the fact that he’d just turned his face into her scent and was reacting to that. “… it won’t halt mine. And there’s every chance being confined with me will trigger yours, whether we stop consuming the medicated water or not.”

She couldn’t not. She could _feel_ his hurting. Kneeling, she shuffled closer and took his hands. Not a hug. Not a withdrawal from him. But, a comfort.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. The one certainty of this; she refused to watch him starve. “We’ll eat normally. We have until mine sets in before they try to drug us—and we have until then to come up with a plan. That could give us weeks.”

“It could give us days,” he replied fatalistically.

“Then, it’s lucky you’re a genius, isn’t it?” she responded, seeing his mouth twitch. “Now, put that brain to work. I refuse to turn up on Hotch’s doorstep with a litter on my heels. Could you _imagine_ his face?”

Her attempt at levity fell flat. Reid went grey, tugging his hands back and standing in a flurry of movement to stride away. In a heartbeat, he’d shifted and was out the door and gone. Alone, she ate her meal and curled in the bed. Alone, she waited for him to come back. They didn’t have to touch—just knowing he was okay and that they were still working through this together would be enough.

He didn’t return.


	11. Narrowing Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** **

_Are you sleeping in the **snow**? _ she demanded when he didn’t return, shifting into a wolf and probing for his familiar mind. Except it didn’t feel familiar right now. It felt wired, masculine, _appealing_ , and she withdrew quickly from that taunting focus being turned towards her. With her mind carefully guarded from his, she sent a coarse, _please come back inside,_ that he ignored.

She waited for the sun and poked her nose out, fog huffing from her muzzle. There was no sign of him, but in the silent, muffled morning she could _almost_ detect the thump of his heartbeat nearby. If it wasn’t for all her senses being attuned to him, she would have missed it. Padding out, she poked around a snowy bank until her nose broke through and she found two wide hazel eyes staring at her from the hollow he’d made.

_You’re a ridiculous animal,_ she told him, and he twisted around until his back was to her. _You’re going to freeze your tail off._ Despite her harsh words, it was somewhat warm in his snow-den. Not comfortably warm, but not ‘frostbite cold’ either. She shuffled further in, ignoring his low warning growl, and studied the only part of his face visible to her with his bristly tail snug over his nose.

_Sled dogs have double coated fur for insulation,_ he said finally, realising she wasn’t going to quit. _They often sleep like this._

She looked at his fur and the thin coating of ice along his flanks and spine. _Interesting,_ she said. She licked the worst of the ice off, ignoring the way he twitched and rumbled with irritation at her tongue on his coat. Finally letting her groom him, and only because the skin underneath was ice-raw and pink. _You’re not a husky. And your fur isn’t double coated. If anything, **I** should be the one asleep under the snow. At least I’m built for it, Vegas boy._

_No,_ he said stubbornly, shivering. _Go away. I’m happy here. Joyful. It smells like wet dog inside anyway, no one here **cleans**._

_I’m not going,_ she warned him, and squeezed into the snow den, pushing it out with her shoulders. It was a horrible, squashy confinement, with snow trickling down her back and shoulders as it heated from her body pressed against it, and he was a shivering, miserable lump of a wolf underneath her, squawking with indignation. _I’m staying right here until you agree to come inside._

_No,_ he snarled, trying to wriggle out from under her, but she was determined. Fuck this place. Fuck these people. Fuck _everything_. Reid peeped as she accidentally leaned too hard on his ribs, crushing him a little, and she amended that last thought. Fuck everything _except_ her best friend. She stubbornly persisted and he went quiet and stopped wiggling. They lay in silence until he sleepily whined, _I’m not shivering anymore_.

_Good,_ she said absently, licking snow from his ears.

_I don’t think it’s good,_ he said, and there was a distinct slur to his voice. _Tired. Confused. I forgot where we were for a second…_

She surged upright, throwing snow around them, and grabbed the idiot by his stupid, selfish ruff. He made a miserable mewling noise as she dragged him up as though he weighed nothing, tugging him through the snow like a sack of doggy potatoes and through the door into the room, cussing the whole time.

_Fucking piece-of-shit idiotic males,_ she was snarling, claws skittering uselessly as she hauled him to the bed and rolled him in. Wet and muddy and completely listless, he sprawled there and blinked sadly up at her as she shifted and stormed to the inner door, booting it with her bare heel.

That didn’t work.

“Stupid fucking selfish _fucker_!” she cried, taking a leaf out of Rossi’s book. She needed to make more noise. Books. Books would do. She jumped the bed, grabbed an armful, and proceeded to hurl them at the door with loud _thumps_ , punctuating each one with a shouted word. “Idiot! Doesn’t! Give! A! Shit! About! Me!”

Reid didn’t reply, curling up tighter, his nose rough and eyes rheumy.

“Oh, that’s _fine_ ,” she screamed at him. “You can go and just fucking _freeze_ yourself to death, you little shit! Leave me here alone! What the fuck am I supposed to do without you, Spencer? How do you expect me to do this alone? Hey! Answer the shitting door you cunt fucking shi—”

The door opened. She blinked, mid-hurl, and was justly rewarded by the book thunking into the man’s shoulder.

“Ow,” he said, frowning at her. “Please, don’t.”

She stared at him and considered throwing the last book, a heavy medical dictionary. Instead, she swallowed her hate and anger and fear and said, “He’s given himself hypothermia because of you assholes. Are you happy now?”

“No,” the man said shortly, shifting the blankets in his arms and striding past. The door clicked shut behind him, someone standing on the other side. Emily caught a glimpse of a rifle butt against a man’s chest. _Yay_. “Hey, Spence. Can you look up for me?”

Spencer looked up. Blinked. His ears flicked, his eyes narrowed, and she watched as black lips curled back to reveal white teeth and whiter gums as he snarled.

“Yeah, I know,” the man said, crouching to lay a heat pack against the frozen wolf’s side. “I hate me too. The feeling is mutual, brother.”

It took a long beat for the word to drop; a long beat in which Emily took a step back from this whole situation and studied the man’s stocky build, the sharp jaw hidden by a neatly-trimmed beard, his green-dark eyes. The scowling shape of the mouth that she’d seen twice before: once on his father’s living room wall, and once on his father’s face.

_Brother._

It was Ethan.

“You fuck,” she breathed, feeling something fierce and _furious_ burst into life in her chest. She wanted to shift. She wanted to hurl herself at him in a flurry of teeth and claws, wanted to throw him to the ground and enact revenge for every day they’d lost in this lonely limbo. “You did this.”

“I didn’t,” Ethan replied quietly, smoothing his hand over Reid’s shoulder and almost getting bitten for his care. Reid snapped his jaws seconds away from his brother’s thumb, his growl ragged and pitched oddly as his body readjusted to not being frozen. “But… not here. Spence… this is fine, okay?”

Reid stopped. Stopped everything. Emily stared, because she’d never seen Reid—the twitchy, fiddly, _wriggly_ Reid this still, not even when asleep—and the sight was disconcerting. Just his hazel eyes locked in place and not a muscle shifting.

Ethan tugged the blanket over his brother, tucking it close and standing to back away. The door opened again, Emily jerking with shock at the sound, and a woman sidled in. Tiny and mousey with a thin, worried face, she held out an armful of clothes and cast a nervous look over her shoulder. There was a ropey scar on her throat, barely hidden by her shirt collar.

“Get dressed,” Ethan said, turning to Emily. “You need to come with me. We don’t have time.” Another glance cut down to Reid, who was beginning to tremble with either fear at his words or the pain of his limbs waking up again at the returning warmth. He whined, shaking his head. “Please, Spence. This is _fine_.”

Reid looked at her then, his brow furrowed and eyes wild.

“Please, hurry,” the woman breathed. Emily took the clothes with steady hands, scenting quickly. The woman’s scent was cold, clean. Chemical. Overlaid with the rough sun-fur scent of Reid.

Not Reid, she realized. Ethan. The woman smelled like Ethan. They were mated.

She hesitated, still on the cusp of her wild anger. Stay here with her sick partner or go and possibly find answers? The tension in the air was palpable. Whatever was causing them to goad her into hurrying, she didn’t think it was a ruse. They were genuinely concerned.

And they needed answers.

“Okay,” she said, and slid on the thick, lined pants, tugging the undershirt overhead. Another shirt followed, a sweater over that, and another coat. The woman watched silently, Ethan’s breathing rough behind them, and there was a medical kit hanging on her arm.

“Stay with Spence,” Ethan ordered the woman. “If they check where you were, Jacobs will say it’s emergency medical treatment. He’s not completely lying.”

“Okay,” the woman agreed, inching past as Ethan strode out the room and held the door open. Emily followed, tugging socks and boots on with one hand and almost stumbling into the wall. Reid whined again as she stepped out of their prison. Emily shuddered at that whine, the layered horror and loneliness and fear within it, but it was too late. The door slammed shut between them with an ominous click of the lock engaging tight, and she was alone in a narrow hallway with Ethan Reid and an unknown werewolf holding a rifle.

“Come on,” Ethan said, striding away. She followed, trying to look at everything at once and under no illusions that this meant freedom. There was a reason they’d waited to do this until one of them was incapacitated. Brother or not, there was every possibility that they would use Reid’s confusion to control her. Cameras hummed overhead as they walked down an endless labyrinth of corridors. Emily looked up at them, studying them as they passed. Red LEDs stared back, not a blinking light among them.

“Your camera system is offline,” she pointed out, all her senses alive. There was nothing to scent in these empty halls but bleach and ice, nothing to look at but bare doors and walls, no one besides the two of them. Her skin felt odd. Over-heavy and weirdly enclosed in the clothes she hadn’t worn for who knows how long, her feet clomping hard on the concrete floor.

“Not for long,” Ethan grunted, and pulled out a key-card to swipe it in a panel next to a thickset door. She tried to peer around unobtrusively to see what pin he pressed in, but he blocked her with his hip and side. The door ground open and she stepped in after him, everything within her screaming _trap. It’s a trap, and you’ve left Reid alone, what kind of a agent **are** you?_

It was a laboratory. She scented now, the bleach still sharp but not sharp enough to hide his scent and that of an unfamiliar wolf, female and young without the musky tang of the season. She narrowed her eyes, scented Ethan again. He didn’t have it either. He wasn’t in season. Instead, there was everything she picked up on the men of her pack—strong, healthy, male, a whiskey-scent that bit at her nostrils that was new but not unfamiliar. There was nothing about him that whispered _virile._

“We’re alone,” he said, whirling on her and forestalling anything she might have been about to accuse him of. “Listen to me, and _please_ , believe me. This is my fault. This is absolutely my fault, but I can’t regret that.” Shaking his head, his eyes were grieved and watery-red. She remembered where she’d smelled that whiskey-scent now; on the drunks her father had used to drink his strains away with. “There’s more happening here than you know. And, I swear, as soon as I realized they had my brother—as soon as I realized you guys aren’t together—I have been doing _everything_ in my power to get you out. I’m trying. I really am, but they’re—” He stopped with a snarl, twining his fingers through his hair and pacing almost on the spot, his face twisted. “You can’t let them breed you.”

There it was; the ugly term. She shuddered, repulsed, her insides crawling as though her reproductive system had just up and decided to nope out of this whole situation.

“Okay, we’re gonna have to back up a fucking step,” she said slowly, glancing at the closed door. She was alone with this man who might be Reid’s brother but that didn’t make him safe, and that wasn’t as comfortable as she might have wished it would be. “Because I have no intention of—”

“They’re monitoring your water supply and waste to check your hormonal levels,” Ethan said blankly with a glance at the clock. “As soon as your hormones spike indicating a season, they’ll dope you up and let it happen. And it _will_ happen. And as soon as that happens, you’re…” He closed his eyes, his face suddenly harrowed, and murmured, “ _trapped_.”

There was a level of grief to that that told her with more certainty just why Ethan Reid had never come home.

“What did they do to you?” she asked, watching him carefully now. Not just what he was showing her. The smaller details: the chemical burns on his narrow hands, the way he kept glancing to the clock as though their time was fast running out, the narrow line of scarring around his throat. She remembered, suddenly, the collar on the wolf they’d seen through the fence.

“Their intention is pups,” he replied, snapping that dark-green gaze back to her. “That’s all they care about. They _profess_ to be doing this for the betterment of the species and their indoctrination would certainly suggest that, but…” He trailed, coughed, and the scar pinched as his throat bobbed. Not collared anymore, but still here. “I took steps to… suppress their influence. On those who don’t agree with what they’re doing, and you’re here because of that. I’m a valuable stud to them… isolated as we are, there’s a screaming need for people like me.”

Something nearby beeped, a machine whirring. There was a desk littered with data reports, chemical equations, half-open journals.

“Chemists,” she murmured, and then thought of Reid. “Geniuses.”

“Captive born and bred,” he replied. There was an uneasiness to his actions suggesting he was putting himself in danger to tell her this, but there was also a dull kind of despair to the slope of his shoulders that suggested he wasn’t as immune to the ‘indoctrination’ as he stated. “They want my brother, Agent Prentiss. I stopped them from continuing to use myself and Quinn for their purposes, so they took Spencer… you were the collateral they must have assumed they could use to twist him to their cause, just like they used Quinn against me. For everything we bullshit about being above animals, there are aspects of our brain that are _primitive._ ” He turned away, fumbling for something on a workbench with a clatter of glass on glass. “You should know how easy we are to control, if one has the right leverage. A male wolf, once mated and _bred,_ is a slave to his need to protect.” The bitterness was raw and realised. She breathed evenly, settling her heels and focusing on not panicking. They needed to know more. They needed Ethan firmly on their side. She needed to find his pressure points.

Maybe he’d already told her what they were.

“What are your children’s names?” she asked, tense. This could be a misstep. The clinking paused and she waited to find out if she’d just shoved her booted foot in it. But if it worked, it was a reminder of the damage done to him, the damage that would be done to the brother that Emily suspected he still loved dearly.

“Arlo, Rowan, Imogen,” he recited, turning to her with empty eyes. “Finley. Calliope. Emily. Oscar.” She blinked. Seven pups? That was… _how?_ That many pups should have _killed_ his mate. But he was still murmuring names, eyes closed and fingers tight around something hidden by his palm. “Nora. Kate. Daniel.”

And it clicked. “That’s a year’s worth of pack pups,” she said, easing back now because she felt sick, flushed, scared, desperate for—strangely—her confined little room and Spencer and comfort. Even tighter to her heart, a frantic hunger for Aaron and his neat bedroom and gentle hands, for Rossi and his loyal calm, for JJ and her soothing voice. “You’re listing the year’s pups.”

“They’ll take them,” he said, and held his hand out palm up. A hypodermic glittered within, the lid capped. “As soon as they’re born. They’ll blindfold you and nose-blind you at your first contraction, and they’ll take them before you have a chance to catch their scent. And that’s how they’ll keep you here. With structured glimpses of a dozen pups through a one-way window and no way to tell which ones are yours until they’re too old for it to matter anymore.”

All pups were born over the same three-month period; it was the nature of seasonal mating. They’d be within weeks of age of each other. Indistinguishable until they were old enough to shift to human form, unless they were willing to risk going by the markings of their fur.

She felt sick.

“What is that?” she asked, and looked at the syringe. The clock ticked once and beeped to mark the hour, and she saw him tremble.

“An out,” he said plainly. “Chemical castration. It’s catered to the males—there’s a female version, but it’s… there are side-effects. And it takes time to set, time you don’t have judging from your luteinizing levels. It’s permanent. It will appear to those who don’t know about the solution that it’s natural. And it’s immediate.”

Emily stared at it.

An out.

A _permanent_ out. Reid would take it; she absolutely knew he would. Carrying litters was dangerous. Exhausting. Damaging to the mother’s body. Reid would castrate himself with his own teeth before risking her like that, and he’d already attempted to turn himself into an astoundingly stupid wolfsicle.

“Side-effects?” she asked slowly, and Ethan shuddered.

Damn.

“Minimal,” he lied, looking away.

Damn, _damn_.

“Don’t lie to me,” she hissed, stepping closer. “He’s your _brother_.”

“The side-effects only last two weeks,” Ethan replied, his skin ashen. “Only two weeks. And he’d be isolated while they… he’d be isolated.”

“Tell me.” A headache throbbed behind her eyes, a warm-hot rush between her hips, a humming electricity down her spine. These feelings she knew. They were out of time. Now or never. Ethan’s nostrils flared, his expression falling.

“Delirium,” he said finally, refusing to meet her eyes. “Paranoia. Ah, it also… there appears to be a trigger for aggressive psychosis in the male solution. Temporary. We think.”

But his eyes said it all. Temporary, maybe, but he was still carrying the wounds. She remembered the scar on his mate’s throat. Torn by teeth, biting down and shaking. Wolfish.

She’d seen Reid’s fear when faced with psychosis and paranoia through their work. Not of the people afflicted with it, she could tell in the twist of his mind that they didn’t frighten him. He feared it for _himself,_ and that had never made sense to her until she’d met Diana Reid.

_Damn_.

“No,” she said quietly, and closed her eyes. They’d have to… they’d have to escape. Between now and the possible… well, they had nine months to work out it. Worst case. It might not even take. She might miscarry. So many mights; she refused to trade a might for a certainty that would hurt him on her behalf.

“You realize what you’re consenting to?” Ethan asked, lowering his hand. He didn’t ask her why. He knew his brother, probably better than she did, and he knew the risks this medication carried. The fact that he wasn’t pushing her further only cemented her resolve. “Your season is starting. That gives you less than twenty-four hours before they realize and medicate the both of you. You’ll be collared and drugged and that’s it. By the time you both come down, pair bonding will do the rest.”

She just looked at him. Not feeling anything. How could she? What could she possibly say to _that_? “Take me back to my friend,” she said instead of anything at all, and turned her back on him. Numb resignation settled over her, offsetting the warm hum of _anticipation_ at the knowledge she was returning to a male whose scent she’d been forcibly assaulted with for weeks now. They walked back in silence, and Ethan’s feet dragged. The cameras were still off. She wondered how much time he’d bought them, and what price he’d paid to offer her a solution she couldn’t take. A solution she couldn’t even admit the existence of to Reid. He’d demand it. He’d be infuriated that she hadn’t given him the option to take it.

He’d gladly light the match if burning himself would save her.

The man looked up as she walked by, the door clicking open at the swipe of Ethan’s card. She walked into his prison willingly with her head down.

Reid bolted upright from the bed, human with his face flushed and hazy. “Emily!” he yelped, trying to stand and forestalled by the woman pressing her hand on his shoulder. He was wobbly. Idiot. “You left, why’d you leave? Are you okay?”

She looked back, but Ethan hadn’t followed her in.

“He’s okay,” the woman said, clipping her pack shut and standing. “Some grogginess, some confusion still, but only mild. Just keep him still and quiet for a few hours, the longer the better.” Emily saw her nostrils flare, saw the sympathy that crossed her face, the hand that flickered up towards her throat. “Good luck.”

And then, she was gone and they were alone again.

Emily closed her eyes, shivered. Everything was pressing down on her; the stress of the day, Reid’s illness, the quiet push of _go to him_ deep inside her. She stripped slowly, throwing the clothes down uncaringly on the muddy floor, and stepped down into the padded depression, scooting his blankets aside. He didn’t twitch away, still too listless to realize what she was doing before she did it; sliding into the cradle of his arms and pressing flush against his body, her fingers for a moment taking the rare opportunity to trace the blurred outline of the burn on his shoulder.

He’d gotten that protecting her. It would have been _worse_ without her protecting him. It was visual proof that they could do this without destroying what they had. If the fire hadn’t broken them, neither would sex, or what came after. She leaned into him, brushing her mouth against the roughly healed skin. Turned her head as she went so her lips only skimmed him, almost accidental. She felt his heart skip with surprise, his breath catch. Felt him harden against her hip despite him being too muddled to realize he was even responding to her touch. They’d never held each other like this, even as his hands cautiously laced over her stomach, fingers trailing on her skin.

“You’re very warm,” he mumbled, relaxing into her body. And that, more than anything, stressed how sluggish his brain still was. If he’d been alert, her proximity would have worried him, had him scenting her, had him questioning her. It would have had him jerking his hips away to stop from brushing against her. Not curling against her back from his chest right down to their ankles twined together with his head drooping against her hair. “Was worried about you.”

“I’m here,” she replied, closing her eyes and lowering herself flat. They’d sleep. They’d just… sleep. She couldn’t think of what else to do. She was done. They were done.

She missed Aaron. She missed Jack. She missed _herself_ ; the Emily who could have faced this fearlessly with her head held high.

Reid was quiet, his breathing evening out. “I’ll never hold this against you,” she told him. “This isn’t our fault.” He didn’t respond, already asleep. She closed her eyes and joined him, dreaming of a reprise of familiar howls summoning her home and a great black wolf standing alone on the edge of a desert that burned with the sun.

And she woke to a gun pressed against her neck. Reid was next to her, frozen and rumbling with a furious snarl working its way violently between from his bared fangs. She was a wolf, her body stiff and unwieldy as she tried to regain her equilibrium. It wasn’t a surprise. Unintentional shifting was a side-effect of the season. Her body burned, Reid’s scent thick in her fur, and they were still twined tight to each other.

A man crouched next to her, seemingly uncaring that his shoulder was brushing the rifle. “Don’t bite,” he warned her, holding up a dark-iron collar and jerking his head to where Reid was pressed down by another warning barrel.

She let him collar her, wheezing when it snapped tight and painful around her throat, feeling it bite hard into her skin and scenting blood on the air. Hers and Reid’s, as he groaned similarly. A hand twisted through the collar, lifting her by it. She choked, twisting in that crushing grip as it pulled tight against her windpipe, but the grip was unrelenting.

“Stop fighting me,” said the man, and a needle dipped into view. She didn’t stop. She fought. Behind her, she heard Reid roaring, issuing great, echoing barks of fury as he battled for his own freedom.

They lost. Reid copped a gut butt to the side of his head after he tore open the arm choking her, splattered with her captor’s blood. She fought until red danced across her eyes; still the needles nipped home. They were dropped, unceremoniously, back into the bed. And while they gasped and struggled back to their paws, collared like fucking _animals_ , the men retreated.

They were alone.

_God, no,_ Reid choked, trying to wedge his paws under the collar and work it off. She winced, seeing blood pool down his chest from where he was tearing the skin. The spikes were set to push against their throats, to stop them from shifting without the iron reacting agonisingly with their skin. _No, no no nonononono!_

_Calm down,_ she managed, shaking her own fur clean of the man’s slimy touch and trying to crawl closer to him. At some point during their sleep, it had hit her well and truly. All she could scent was his fur, his sweat, his musk, and it was scattering her brain. All she could think about, horrifyingly, was Aaron and _his_ scent, and Reid could hear that. Her boundaries shattered, she was projecting so loud that she knew he could hear her. _Just, oh god, breathe. Breathing. We’re breathing._

She tried to lick at the blood, offer him some comfort, but he whirled on her and snarled. She didn’t flinch. Her heart was hammering. He smelled _delicious._

_I’ll never hold this against you_ , she repeated calmly and pressed close. Both their hearts were racing. He was standing spread-legged, tail high and bristling. Not meeting her gaze. His mind was a turmoil; internally, he was screaming. _This isn’t our fault._

_I’m the aggressor,_ he moaned, quivering away. _I’m going to—_

_Not our fault,_ she repeated, tugging him down by his ear to huddle against her chest. They stayed like that, pressed together. _Never our fault_. He let her groom him; shoulders first, chest. Nipping at the clumpy parts where his fur matted with blood. Where he’d attacked a man to protect her. _I love you._ She didn’t have to clarify what she meant. Her emotions did it for her. He didn’t ask for clarification. He could feel it. They were friends; they’d been friends for years. He’d almost died for her, she’d die for him. She loved him. Absolutely.

They were pack in everything but formalities, and she suspected they always had been.

_I love you too,_ he replied, his voice distant. _I’m sorry._

_Not your fault,_ she said one final time, and licked his muzzle. They waited. The sun dipped outside. Maybe it was an hour, maybe less, maybe forever. Time spread a little.

He shivered once and pulled away, but she was already up. Dizzy and joyful and more than a little fucked up, the drugs hit hard and they dragged her with them. In that moment, she was many things: twisted, lost, in love, aroused, still lost. She felt him spiralling after, felt him hum something in her brain that could have been her name or it could have been _find me_ or it could have been _I want._ His mind hauled her close, nothing like the gentle meet of hers and Aaron’s and everything like the unstoppable drag of a ship being thrown against uncaring rocks. It dragged her again and she crashed against him, broke apart. He leapt up, whirled, and she could scent everything; _alive, male, strong, here, so fucking aroused, alivealivealivealive._

Her blood danced, her paws dancing too. On two legs and four, moving to stop her skin from flinging itself off, following some uncertain beat. They slammed against each other again, their minds relentless in their quests to bind them. Distantly she heard herself whine, heard herself question _would it be so bad?_ It kicked in slow and then fast; a giddy, euphoric feeling that thrummed with her heart and her pulse and pulled her towards the snow, towards a remembered verge of trees and a black wolf waiting. _You’re your own wolf, Emily Prentiss,_ but she didn’t feel like her own wolf right now. She felt lost. Another impact. This time she went with it, lying flat on her belly with her tail curled to the side and her throat bared. _Take this. All of it._

_Yours._

Reid watched her silently, his own blood skipping. He stepped forward and she stared into his eyes, bottomless. Black. Pupils so huge she couldn’t see the hazel. He scented her, scented what she wanted. And she did the same, his scent musky, salty, strong enough to taste. She knew what he wanted, could see it.

_Me._

One of them made a noise, an unfathomable hum of a sound that throbbed through both their chests and reminded them that they were less. That they could be more if they’d just give in. He stood, crouched, stood again. Uncertain. His eyes tracked her haunches with a dazed kind of longing. But that wasn’t the game. His muzzle brushed hers, he crooned deep in his throat.

She ran. Out the door and into the snow. He followed. In that moment, she loved him unequivocally. Their minds tangled again, but this time they stuck. Wrapped around each other until she couldn’t tell which throb of desire was hers and which was his. She ran from that wanting, because the chase was part of it. And she howled, knowing he’d answer. Knowing he’d hunt her. Knowing that, when she allowed it, he’d catch her.

He did. 


	12. Silent Secession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Four: Chapter Twelve to Fourteen**
> 
> __

_You have to eat._

He ignored her. The same steadfast silence he’d assailed her with for almost a month now, ever since she’d snapped to clarity with him still pressed to her. He’d dropped back to sobriety shortly after, his breath hot on her spine and heart hammering in his chest. Terrifyingly sober.

He hadn’t spoken since. Everything they’d done since that point, they’d done in silence. Eating together. Sleeping curled nose to tail, every night, his eyes watchful until she dozed off first. If she ran laps of the yard to keep herself fit and active, he followed. At night, he tugged the blanket over her, fussing endlessly until she growled at him to _lay down, damnit_. Mealtimes, he pushed his food on her if he didn’t think she was eating enough, moving the choicest bits onto her plate. She ignored that. Idiot wasn’t going to starve himself on her behalf. He _loomed_ , ceaselessly, but all she wanted from him was a single word.

She had no idea what they’d done in the hazy time lost to the drugs and that first initial mad rush of the season hitting them. Suspected that they’d lost days to it. Suspected more than that when her season had ended abruptly, far earlier than expected. It hadn’t ended immediately, their bodies still pulling at each other, their minds hardly helping.

Despite him blocking her out of his thoughts, she’d still been able to smell his desire and feel the way he’d wanted her. Knew her own scent had mirrored it. On that day, Spencer rolled over and woke with a slow, lazy yawn, automatically scenting the air. He’d realized what she’d noticed instantly but hadn’t quite thought through the implications, slinking away with the stink of shock practically dripping from him.

They wouldn’t know for weeks yet, not for sure, but they knew enough to fear the possibilities.

_I miss your voice_ , she said hours later, watching the snow with her heart aching. He looked at her. Looked at her from the corner of his hazel eyes, chin propped on the window-sill and tail curled between his skinny legs. _I miss you, Spence. Please, don’t shut me out…_

But he did.

He still slipped down and crept over. He still snuggled in beside her and softly licked at a whorl of fur on her chest. She rolled to her side and closed her eyes against the forced loneliness of this moment as he whined and nudged her with his nose before returning to his careful grooming. She dozed off to his tongue on her flanks, half-dreaming of him whispering to her. But when she flickered almost awake, she looked up to find him back by the window and watching the fading snow with misery in every line of his body.

_You have to forgive yourself one day,_ she sent sleepily, closing her eyes again. Not really expecting an answer.

_I can’t_ , she dreamed he replied.

When he wasn’t fussing, he was empty. Just a husk of a wolf curled in the bed doing nothing or standing in the snow with his breath fogging. Blank. Listless. She could smell it creeping into his scent; the sharp sun-bright notes overlaid with a dull tang that screamed _ill_. Depression wasn’t subtle on a wolf, and nor was it slow in its progression.

_If you give up on yourself, I’m alone,_ she reminded him, and he nodded slowly and said nothing.

_I can’t get through this without you_ , she added another day, feeling like she was screaming into the void. His eyes flickered to meet her gaze, itching absently at the collar around his neck with a hind paw.

_You’re being a coward_ , she hissed on the night before things changed, refusing to let him into the bed. He obliged her, instead lying beside the bed with his nose on his paws and his expression woeful. She caved three hours after and let him in. For his sake, not hers. She was fine without him beside her.

Completely.

And she didn’t think of Aaron, because she couldn’t bear to imagine his horror if he knew about the drugs, the possible pregnancy, the _room_.

_We have to go home_ , she whispered once, before giving up on Spencer responding. He nodded, slow and even, and looked back to the window.

And that was the last time she mentioned it.

They woke that morning to a grinding _whirr_ outside, Spencer rising with one paw cocked protectively over her shoulder and his hackles up. The shutter over the window was down, and when she wiggled out from under him—ignoring his sharp whine of protest—the door was sealed.

They looked at each other, and then they waited.

Hours later, there was a soft click. The door unlocking. Emily swallowed, growling at Spencer when he went to move towards it, and then walking ahead of him. Damn him. Just because she was… well, just because she _might_ be, didn’t mean he was allowed to play the role of Hotch Lite and take point. She was bigger, stronger, and a hell of a lot more stubborn.

A brisk shock of cold air shoved into the room as she swung the door open and padded out into the over-bright day. Sunlight reflected from snow, searing her eyes, and she had to blink to reorientate herself against the pain of that refraction.

When she looked to the left, all was normal. Fence, snow, more snow, even more fucking snow.

She looked to the right, and wolves stared back at her. Six of them, all wide-eyed and stunned.

_Ah,_ she said, and Spencer shouldered past to see, his gaze thinning as he scanned them. The fences between their enclosures were gone, the outer perimeter still in place.

_Guess this is a party now!_ one of the new wolves barked, skittering forward and spinning in place. _Woo!_ He sounded painfully young, his grey-fringed tail waving furiously. Behind him, a dun-coloured female cowered with her ears folded back and eyes locked on the couple pacing out into the snow. Both large, both rugged, neither of them spoke or even looked at the other wolves. Directly next to where Emily and Spencer were housed, the grey wolf from before the season examined them warily. By his side, a slender fawn and white wolf pressed close. Emily scented. Mated. Whether they were before or not… she narrowed her eyes and scented again. Nothing familiar in the scent but something that felt like she’d seen it before. Even as she watched, the male wolf curled around his mate possessively and ogled them all. It clicked.

_David Arnold?_ she asked, stepping forward. Spencer jerked with surprise next to her. _And Clarissa?_

Eyes swung towards them. Every wolf was focused on her now.

The grey wolf arched his chest and growled. _What’s it to you?_ he snarled, Clarissa’s ears at his side perking forward. _Who the fuck are you?_

_Agents Prentiss and Reid—we’re FBI,_ Emily replied. Shock settled over the wolves in front of them as they seemed to forget their wariness and surged forward to all cluster in front. _We were assigned to your case before…_

She trailed off.

_Good fucking job,_ David replied with a snort, tossing his head. His wife hissed something soft to him, scolding him for the rough words. _What good to us are you two **here**?_

_You’re feds?_ the young wolf asked, slinking up with hopeful eyes. _You’ve come to get us out of here?_

_We’re going home?_ asked his mate.

_No, you idiots,_ David replied, whirling in place. _They’re trapped here too! Sniff ‘em! They’re as fucked as the rest of us!_

One of the rangy wolves made a low noise that turned everyone’s attention to her. Black and white, she was older than the rest. Older, healthy, her scent salt-marked and range-y. It reminded Emily of the ocean. _Calm,_ she said softly. _Remain calm. There is a plan in place for us. We will be cared for._

The wolves looked at each other.

_A plan?_ Spencer asked, his mind-voice thin and husky. They all winced at the tang of choking guilt it was flavoured with. _This is part of their… plan? For what?_

_For our future,_ the wolf replied simply, and turned away. Her mate said nothing. _And the futures of those we joyfully carry._

_Joyfully!_ cried Clarissa, her scent turning sharp with anger and fear. _I don’t want pups! They’ve **forced** this on us—two of my sisters died birthing pups. They’ve planned my death! _ The others snarled with her, a clamour of furious voices chattering over each other. Emily tried to calm them—tried to turn their focus away from the rage aimed at the salt-scented wolf—but they refused to be distracted.

_Someone will come for us!_ one of them was howling. _They’ve got to—they’ll come looking for their feds!_

_We’re going to die here!_

_Do they just want pups? What will do they do to us once they’ve got them?_

_If they just want pups, us males are pretty fucked then, aren’t we? They’re probably going to shoot us all—_

“Hello, yes. Excuse me.” The wolves shut up as one, turning to face the man who’d walked into the compound through the middle door. He wasn’t alone. Two other men flanked him, both armed, two more women standing behind with worried expressions. “Hello. Oh my. Look at you all. Such a handsome crowd this year, we’re all very lucky.”

Spencer pressed close to Emily’s side, his body rumbling with a growl he wasn’t voicing. Around them, despite their previous antagonism, the other wolves pulled in nearer—except the two larger wolves, who sat to the side and seemed entirely calm with the proceedings. As though they’d been here before.

“Well, we won’t stay long.” The man smiled widely, his gaze lingering on each of them in turn and rubbing his hands together against the fiercely frigid air. “We just wanted to be sure that you’re all comfortable and adjusting to this sudden change in your lives. You see, we have had problems in the past with the season plus, ah, other influences causing fights among our new community members—that’s you guys—so isolation during the seasonal weeks is unfortunately the outcome of that. But now that that is all over and you’re all ready to embark upon your duty to this pack and your species, we’d like you all to get to know each other. Encourage familiarity. After all, pack is family, which means you’re all surrounded by kin now.”

Silence.

_What the fuck,_ Emily deadpanned. The other wolves crowded in, identical rolls of horror washing off of all of them.

_Shh,_ said the salt-laced wolf. _Listen._

“As an introduction, my name is Lionel and I am your guide to your new life.” The man spread his hands, fingers splayed and body language open. Emily narrowed her eyes.

_Cult_ , she whispered to Spencer, the thought for him alone. He nodded. _This is a cult. Community, guides, new lives. Those two there—they’re already members. They’re here to ease new arrivals in, to make submitting to the cause seem easy in comparison to fighting it._ He nodded again, his ears flicking back.

The man continued: “You’re all welcomed here. Unfortunately, until we can be sure that you’re willing to subscribe to our pack values, you will be held in these rooms. But I’m sure you’ll all come to see the benefits of compliancy soon enough, and then we can show you the true strength of our family and our kinship to each other! I ask that you take this time to reflect, to learn one another, to look to your futures. Sisters, focus on being healthy and strong for the lives you contain within you. Brothers, your futures are those lives. Look to your mates. We ask that you uphold the vows you made to them in the act of pair bonding. You are all now—no matter whether your mate carries to term or otherwise—fathers and protectors. Your every future action should be with thought to those roles. Now, we shall leave you. We will return daily—your isolation is over! Festivities can begin!”

They left, leaving behind the chill wind and a lingering feeling of _oh shit_.

_What do we do now?_ asked the dun-wolf, her voice shrill. _Agents, what do we do?_

_We wait_ , Emily said finally, because she had to say something. _We’ll work this out. Don’t panic._

_You’re just as trapped as we are,_ David said glumly. He laid his muzzle on his wife’s shoulder burrowing against her. _What can you do?_

Neither of them had an answer to that.

* * *

They returned as promised. If Emily had hated the ‘team-building’ exercises the FBI had pushed them into back home, she _despised_ these. Day after day of being forced into a circle, to talk to the ‘group’ as though they _wanted_ to be there, to watch their ‘guide’ simper and parrot the same lines over and over again while men leaned against the wall of the compound with rifles on their hips and their legs stomping the ground to chase off the disorientating cold. She allowed it purely because it didn’t offer them any benefits to fight just yet.

Spencer refused to engage. He hunkered in the corner of the yard and curled his lip at anyone who approached. Emily watched worriedly, seeing how the cold crept in through his thin fur and set him to shuddering furiously. She hated that—hated knowing how the cold hurt him so much more than the others, his mind always sluggish when she tried to reach for it after these meetings. David joined him, huddling close as some kind of warmth.

The second week, one of the men tried to push both of them into the group circle. Both refused. They brought the gun down on David’s shoulder, slamming him into the snow. Spencer bit them in a flurry of snarling and pent up anger. Red on white and tan, his pretty coat splattered once more. And the compound exploded. Wolves surging everywhere; Clarissa trying to keep them away from David, Emily and the young wolf—Josh, as he’d brightly told them, his partner named Ella—going for the man who threatened Spencer.

“We’re very disappointed,” Lionel had told them all sadly once calm had been—forcefully—restored, and then he’d split them up. The four females into the end room which was usually Josh and Ella’s, where the salt-laced wolf kept up a litany of _that was terrible, we should ensure this doesn’t happen again, they’re only trying to help_. The door was locked and they were confined there together for two agonisingly long days. Every time Emily reached for Spencer, or _any_ of them frantically reached for their mates, they found nothing.

When they were released finally, the other rooms were empty.

_What have they done with them?_ Ella said. Her and Clarissa both looked to Emily now, their eyes hopeful. Emily hunched over, her stomach cramping and her brain wired with worry, realizing she _was_ their hope now. _Are they hurting them?_

_We’d know if they were being hurt,_ she soothed, and hoped that was true. Checking the room, scenting for Spence, for _anything_ , she ended up in the bathroom hurling her anxiety into the metal-plated bowl of the toilet.

_Are you okay?_ Ella asked, lingering by the door. She was young. So painfully young—barely eighteen and early to her first season—and Emily closed her eyes and shuddered with a combination of the aftereffects of being ill and the knowledge that _this_ was the girl’s introduction to adulthood. She should have been home, with her family, her pack, not… _Are you…_

Emily’s eyes snapped open, her gut lurching again.

Oh no.

_No,_ she said savagely, and got up to pace the room. _I can’t be._

“Congratulations,” Lionel said to the cluster of silent women two days later, smiling down on them. They hunched back, with Emily curled sideways so that the two smaller females could slip behind her. Ella’s shaking was almost convulsive. “You’re all going to be mothers. This is a joyous time!”

_I’ll kill him,_ Emily heard Clarissa hiss. _I’ll kill him with my own jaws._

_I want Josh,_ Ella began to cry.

They brought the others back that night. Each of them quiet, their eyes white-ringed with stress. Spencer immediately lurched forward and crashed into Emily, his paws anxious and muzzle working over every inch of her as he checked for any kind of injury. He was trembling, soft little huffs of half-whines slipping from his jaws. She let him press close until it was like he was trying to crawl inside her, his heart jack-rabbiting in his chest.

They crept into their room, huddled together in silence.

_I’m pregnant,_ Emily said finally, because Spencer still hadn’t said a word. _They confirmed it. They’re still testing our water I think…_

Spencer shuddered.

_You can’t keep withdrawing,_ she scolded him, and knew that desperation was leeching into her words. _I need you now more than ever. What did they do to you?_

_Isolation,_ he said finally, his voice distant as he tried to shield his emotions from her. Snippets still slipped through, impossible for him to hide with their shared pair-bond tying them together. _Complete isolation. Dark room, pitch-black, just…_ He stopped and curled tighter, his eyes glazed.

He hated the dark.

There was a scratch at the door, a soft huff. Emily rose with a growl.

_It’s me,_ Ella sent.

_Us,_ Josh corrected.

Surprised, Emily padded over and opened the door, greeting the two trembling wolves. Snow crunched under their paws as they circled the door, half thawed and refrozen with the shifting weather.

_Can we stay with you guys tonight?_ Ella asked finally, her tail low and shoulders hunched. _We… we’re scared._

_Yes,_ Emily said, and stepped aside for them. More paws sounded on the snow, David padding closer. He didn’t say anything, just watched them wordlessly with his wife at his side. Emily twitched her head, inviting them in. The girls slept curled to Emily’s side, Josh and Spencer laid out on either side of the bed like sentries. Emily didn’t sleep, her eyes on the door. David stood there all night, his eyes locked on the whirls of white against the thick glass.

Spencer didn’t sleep either.

_What are you planning?_ she asked him finally, Ella kicking slightly in her sleep next to her. Clarissa’s eyes flickered open, shifting her paws so one was hooked over the younger wolf’s leg soothingly. _I can see your brain ticking._

Light caught his eyes as his gaze switched to her. He didn’t say anything for the longest time, until she heard the quietest whisper of his voice. _You trust me, don’t you?_

_Always_ , she responded instantly.

He nodded slowly. _Okay. Just… whatever happens, no matter **what** happens… don’t join them. Don’t comply. Promise?_

She didn’t have any intention of it. _Okay?_ she responded, but he didn’t say any more. They lay there in silence, the six of them, and waited for dawn together.

 

* * *

 

Days slipped together. Endless days of waking to Lionel’s cheerful repetition of _when you subscribe to the morals of our community, you will be welcomed._ Days of being forced to repeat their greetings to each other in the cold with ice clumping between the pads of their paws. She _hated_ that. Knew exactly what they were doing with it, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-shattering.

It was Josh’s turn today.

_My name is Josh Court. I’m from Montana—_

“Was,” Lionel would interject with a smile, his eyes darting to the salt-laced female and her mate. Communicating, somehow, in order to know when to cut in. “That was a long time ago, Josh.”

Josh faltered. Continued. _I… I met Ella in high school. We’re supposed to graduate together this year._ He looked to Lionel, who smiled and nodded. Emily’s lip curled. _My mom—_

“Keep the topic relevant to your life,” Lionel said. Discounting their pasts. Over and over and over again, until even Emily was starting to feel all tangled up. She never spoke of Aaron or Jack or Sef or her mom and somehow this made them less, while this compound stayed real and demanding and _now_.

_Do you think they’re even looking in the right place?_ she glumly asked Spencer that night, trying to goad him into conversation. He wasn’t giving her the complete silence of those first horrific weeks, but nor was he chatty.

_Who?_ he asked dully.

_Aaron. Dave. JJ. The team._

All he did was shrug, and vanish outside into the night. She followed him out when he didn’t return immediately, seeing the dark shape of him against the perimeter fence. Padding over, she could have sworn there was a wolf on the other side—broad and dark and pressed as close as possible without being zapped—but when she moved closer, Spencer was alone.

“Will you speak today, Spencer?” Lionel asked the next day. He asked it every day. None of them expected Spencer to ever answer.

_Yes,_ Spencer said suddenly, walking into the circle. They all blinked, staring at him. Josh’s ears perked up, his blue-grey gaze turning hopeful. Still so certain that the two agents were there to rescue them. _My name is Spencer Reid. My previous home is irrelevant, and you’ll likely tell me to stop if I mention it. My previous family is irrelevant. My previous goals and interests are irrelevant._ His eyes flickered to Emily—his expression was blank but there was a whisper to his voice that begged her to trust him. So, she did, despite every word sinking deep into her soul like a hook and dragging painfully at her. _I am pair bonded to Emily Prentiss. My dedication to her is absolute. If this community’s ideals serve her interests, then I serve this community. We will welcome our offspring into a family comprised of the kin that surround us._

Silence followed this. Josh looked confused. David sat rigid. Clarissa’s eyes narrowed, Ella looked to Emily.

Emily looked at her paws and said nothing.

“Anything to add to that, Emily?” Lionel said finally, his lips twitching upwards into a relieved smile he was barely holding back.

_Go to hell,_ she said finally, anger surging. At Spencer—despite her being sure he was playing the expected role—because even if he _was_ acting, it was _terrifying_ , and at Lionel, and at everyone around her. _You can all rot in hell!_

Lionel was silent, his eyes skipping to the wolf they’d planted within them. “Unfortunate,” he said finally, looking sad. “That is… unfortunate. It is always sad when pair bonds are unsuccessful. Consider, Emily, when a mate makes an offer of absolute dedication to you, that perhaps you owe him respect for that sacrifice. It’s a terrible thing when an uneven commitment forces us to recommend the dissolution of a bond at the end of a pregnancy. Spencer, we are creatures of our word. You will be shown the community that you’re opening your mind to accepting if you continue down the path that you’ve stepped upon. Margie, please take him.”

The remaining wolves said nothing, their eyes following Spencer as he walked out without a single backwards glance, only hesitating at the doorway.

“Our pups will be safe here,” Lionel called after him. “Kin of yours are kin of ours. We will protect them.”

Spencer nodded once, almost looking back.

Then he was gone.

Emily shifted uncomfortably, the implications of Lionel’s ‘our pups’ instead of ‘your mate’ not lost on her. She was only as important to them for what her womb could offer them, while Spencer offered so much more. His intelligence, his genes… his ability to sire multiple litters instead of the one she was limited to.

She had a familiar feeling that somewhere in this new _community_ they were trapped in, there was a file with her name on it labelled _temporary._


	13. Darling Duplicity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every morning, before the sun rose and the door opened to usher Spencer away, they ran together. He goaded her the first day, nudging her awake and murmuring _run with me_. It was a coaxing whisper, his voice low and husky and rumbling through their chests. She shivered awake with the timbre of it, vividly aware that he was using his _mate_ voice and unable to hide her response to that. It was the sole time either of them really considered the full implications of the binding in their minds. They kept withdrawn from each other any other time—Emily because she sensed Spencer would prefer it that way and Spencer because he was doing _something_ he didn’t want her seeing.

It was a single concession to what they’d done to each other, and she secretly treasured it. Every moment of those morning bursts of speed and power, paws carrying her easily across half-melted snow as the dawn broke around them. Even as time inched on in this timeless frozen wasteland, they had this. And it was almost possible to forget that they were trapped, that their families were so far away and probably sure that they were dead by now. Easy to forget that Spencer was getting deeper and deeper into something that she worried he wasn’t prepared to stand against.

This world was windy. Windy and bitterly cold, and every day after they took Spencer away, they still gathered them in the yard to continue their attempts at goading them to join him. The wind grew stronger as spring fell on them in full force, blasting their fur and peppering salt into unprotected ears and eyes. Most days—the nine hours of sunlight they got, anyway—were foggy, a mist so thick it settled around them like a cloak and almost blocked their view of each other.

The nights were gorgeous. When the clouds crept away, the sky lit in waves of green and blue. She and Spencer moved as one out under the never-ending landscape of sky and snow, the horizon falling away and leaving them the only two alone in the world. Their captivity seemed somehow illusionary when the clouds dissipated just enough to allow these vistas, as though their walls were contained in the skies above. Impossibly alone under the Northern Lights, the stars splashed wildly across the black sky, he told her the names of every constellation he knew. If it got colder, they slipped inside together, shoulder to shoulder and minds alive.

She’d never felt closer to him than she did under those meandering skies, as he whispered endless streams of facts and litanies of information to her. She sought to memorise it all, to take something beautiful from this lost time.

But the circles continued in the daylight. Other wolves joined them. Previous converts. They came in wolf form and they repeated Lionel’s words, but impossible to block out. Worming, creeping repetitions of solidarity, of family, of welcoming homes waiting for them, and they couldn’t not listen because they were in their very minds.

They took her from her cage only once, to a sterilized medical room where Quinn watched blankly as Emily was ushered up onto a table and told to lay still while they performed an ultrasound. Their ‘request’ was backed up by their weapons, so she complied. The screen was tilted away from her, her head locked in place by one of the assistant’s hands on her collar forcing her to stare at the wall as the violent hum of clippers started up near her abdomen.

She couldn’t help it. She was terrified. Not just of the cold pressure of the clippers against her belly, but of the screen that sat ominously nearby, the hands pressing her down, the bleach-sharp scent that crowded her nose, the unspoken realization that this was it. This was the proving of her greatest fear. Her small but closely held hope that _maybe they were wrong. Maybe I’m not pregnant_ being shattered right here, and she was alone.

Completely alone.

The fear was hot and rushed through her body before turning shockingly cold, freezing her to that metal table. The assistant holding her felt her shudder, saw her nostrils flare and her ears slink back flat against her skull. Hands stroked her sides in a false attempt at soothing, even as black wisps of fur began to float to the floor.

_Emily?_ came the distant cry, Spencer crowding into her mind suddenly with his own thoughts in a flurry. Wherever he was, he’d felt her terror and was responding to it. Without registering what she was about to do before she’d done it, she bailed on that white washed room and all its implications and dived into his mind, curling against his thoughts with a sob and a frantic need to _not be alone_. She reached, desperately, for her pack, her mom, her _life,_ but there was nothing there. Just… nothing. Nothing but his mind and her uncontrollable anxiety, and she clung to him with a desperation that terrified him. _Love, love… it’s okay. Shh, shh, what are they doing to you?!_

She didn’t answer, just curled closer and tried to block out his stress and distraction, hurtling through blank-walled corridors on a quest to find the room she was locked in. She heard him call out to someone, furiously, and then she curled up tight enough that she wasn’t really registering anything at all anymore.

Clarity returned sharply as the door banged open and a man strode in. Struggling up hopefully against the hands that held her as she registered an almost familiar scent, disappointment was fierce when she realized it wasn’t Spencer at all, but Ethan.

“Her mate is distressed,” he said in a clipped voice, but his eyes were soft. Emily shivered as a cold weight slid across her belly, Quinn silently focused on the screen to her side and scribbling notes onto a sheet next to her. “Can we move this along?”

“We’re done, good girl,” Quinn said, removing the wand and replacing it with a warm washcloth that wiped the gel away. Emily stared at them, knowing her expression was vacant and staring, as they eased her down from the bed and led her towards the door. The ground felt wobbly under her paws, uneven, and she staggered slightly and felt her breath catch.

“I’ve got her,” Ethan reassured them, and led the way from the room with his hand on her shoulder. She followed, wordless and stunned, the room spinning around her and bitterly cold from her bared stomach. They walked in silence back to the room, their path narrated by the thump of his boots and her claws clicking. Her stomach was cramping, her body caving in under the weight of what she knew was about to properly hit her. When he swung open the door, she entered first and he followed.

Spencer surged up from the bed, his scent musky with fear and strain. He butted against her, scenting her, ducking down to bare his teeth at the shaved patch of fur that she already knew was going to be an absolute bitch when the wind hit it.

_Em, are you okay? Talk to me, please, talk to me, you feel terrified,_ he was rambling, tripping over himself in his desperation to assure both of them that she was okay. _Did they give you an ultrasound? What did they say? Did they let you—_

“Results are hidden from you guys,” Ethan murmured with a wary glance to the vents above. “They don’t want you knowing how many pups you have coming, or the sexes of those pups. That’s why they took her without telling you.”

Spencer swallowed, pressing close to her side. _Oh god,_ he said suddenly. _This is it. You’re actually…_

_But I don’t want to be_ , she said stupidly, hating herself for how vapid and weak she sounded in that moment.

Ethan’s hand rested on the door, propping it open to stop from being sealed in. “Spence,” he said suddenly, his voice barely audible to them. Human ears would have no chance. “G1P0, DCDA. Triplet birth. I have to go.”

And he was gone.

_Triplets?_ Emily asked blankly. _Wait, what did the rest of that mean? We’re having… oh my god…_ Triplets. Three lives that were suddenly dependant on her. Three more captives into this hellish new world, if she didn’t die bringing them into it.

_It’s… medical terminology,_ he said finally, looked oddly at her. _One pregnancy, zero previous births. Dichorionic, diamniotic. Two placentas, two amniotic sacs—with a triplet birth, it means two are sharing._

Emily breathed in once, slow and deep, to order her thoughts, and he must have sensed her confusion. When he spoke again, there was the guilt again but also a simmer of shock that was more excitement than horror, a reluctant kind of wonder.

_Twins,_ he explained suddenly, blinking rapidly at her in his usual awkward manner. One paw tracing the ground nervously. _Two of the three are… twins. Identical._

Oh.

She curled around and looked at her side, still flat. Still normal and how it’d always looked to her, the black fur mostly in place and her tail held at an uncertain angle. Except she wasn’t how she’d always been anymore. Everything was different now.

Different, but not different enough. The indoctrination continued.

David crumpled first. Clarissa was the first to start to show, the barest swelling of her concave sides. The thick fur of their stomachs was slow to grow back, the skin underneath raw and pink from the arctic winds. To Emily’s disgust, their solution to this was horrifically patterned sweaters. Hers had bells on it, a Christmas tree on the back, and she felt ridiculous as she wiggled into it while Spencer helped haul it over her head. It was better than frostbite though. She could feel him trying not to giggle, and that almost helped soothe the irritation with its festive cheer.

Clarissa gave in two days after David did. They joined Spencer on whatever it was the wolves asked of him when he left daily and, barely two weeks after that, they didn’t return at all. Their room was locked.

_I just want to see_ , Josh promised Ella, and he vanished too. Returning each day quieter and quieter, and when Ella woke Emily one night to show her the hint of her own pregnancy, Emily knew it wouldn’t be long until they were gone too. It was just too hard to push away the constant influx of _join us_ , the growing awareness that if they continued isolating themselves, they’d bear children into a packless life. Every part of her fought that notion.

But Spencer’s soft plea stuck in her mind. _Don’t submit_.

So, she didn’t.

And then she was alone. Even the salt-laced wolves vanished. Emily wasn’t sure how long it had been, Spencer didn’t seem overly sure either, but the weather was only just below freezing and the world was more ice than snow. The sun peaked out for fourteen hours a day, usually hidden behind thick clouds. Lionel didn’t bother visiting anymore, but every day she was still assailed with the gormlessly smiling ‘guides’ who assured her there was so much more waiting for her than this cold, loveless compound.

_I can’t do this,_ she begged him one night, when he returned with his fur thick with sea-salt and brine. _Spence, I feel like I’m going mad. You leave every day and I’m here alone and… I **can’t**._

_I’m sorry,_ he breathed, and truly felt it. She licked at his fur and winced at the sharp taste. _I… they won’t take my collar off until they’re sure I’m…_ He winced and didn’t continue, so she curled against his chest and did nothing but breathe with him. _And they won’t believe me unless you submit too._

_I can fake…_ she began, but he cut her off.

_No,_ he replied, voice distant once more. _You need to stay here. I need you here. It’s going to get harder. And I can’t tell you more because I need you to… you need to hate me for this. For leaving you here and abandoning you and everything that I’m doing right now._

She blinked and mulled that over.

_Are you asking me to convince them I hate you?_ she asked finally, shifting around to press her muzzle to his. They spent so much time apart and he was the singular anchor in this new life that she could cling to. It felt like a disloyalty to some distant memory of who she’d used to be, but she couldn’t help but seek this comfort when he was close.

Despite this, she hated herself. Hated herself because she knew was this was. It was an utter betrayal of Aaron and everything they’d almost had. It was her letting go of him.

Knowing that wouldn’t stop her.

_No,_ he answered. _I’m asking you to hate me. For what I’ve done. And what I’m going to do. And for how... they get in your head, they’re so good at it, Em. And they play on our most basic instincts. Everywhere I go, they just repeat the same lines about how good it is that I have offspring coming, that I’m soon to be one of them, that you’re carrying my young. That’s repulsive to me, their pleasure in that fact. But they repeat it and they repeat it and now when I look at you I feel…_

He didn’t need to finish that line. She could feel it. A deep-seated pride that wasn’t Spencer-y or warm, but something dark and wolfish. If she pressed at the emotion, it felt like the season did. Unstoppable and primal and it uncurled something deep in her core that made her feel warm and soft inside. It made her want to press herself up under him and make the soft crooning noise in her throat that had once so pleased her when Aaron had made it. It was masculine and _strong_ , and she couldn’t help but feel a little bit turned on and a lot in over her head at the touch of it.

_Assholes,_ she snarled instead, turning in a tight circle and sensing his gaze tracking her. _They’re in your fucking head. Don’t do this, Spence. Just stay here. We’ll work this out together._

_I can’t,_ he responded miserably.

_I’m scared you’re going to lose yourself to them,_ she admitted, feeling just that. Scared. Alone, already. Angry as well, that he doubted her ability to stand beside him out there and fight them as well. She couldn’t work out how much of that was valid fear that that would lessen his ability to find them a way out, or if it was pure misogynistic bravado of him trying to keep his mate and pups out of danger.

_So am I,_ he finally replied, but that didn’t stop him going.

He let her have snippets sometimes. Snatches of feelings and sensations from wherever he was. Greedily, she found herself waiting for these moments, savouring them. Any hint that there was still a world beyond this silent room and vacant compound. Almost as much as she savoured the whispers of his emotions that she got from them as well, any reminder that the Spencer who’d used to work beside her at the BAU was still in there. Worry, love, focus; feelings that she innately associated with him.

One day it was a thick scent of petroleum as he padded through a warehouse with two men at his side. Machines lurched around him, the cement floor painfully cold under his paws and the roof yawning above. They walked towards a bank of tarps and ice-bound windows, and then he cut her off and she was in her room alone again. Another day, it was a chemistry lab. Standing with his paws on a counter, watching two women bent over a tray of test tubes. The air was sharp with chemicals, one of the women looked up and smiled at him, and he wagged his tail in return and felt _pleasure, acceptance, focus—_

He cut her off from that one and she ran two laps of the perimeter fence just to shake how _not-lonely_ he’d felt in that moment.

Walking with a male wolf on pack ice, something huge moving in the depths below. Wonder. Amazement. Awe. She felt the same when the whale breached nearby, sea-salt spraying the air.

A library. A brightly lit room where he moved hesitatingly towards a plate glass window, a snatch of colour and countless moving bodies and then a surge of _wantmiseryshockpridehorror_ that jumbled her and him until he shoved her out and blocked her from knowing what he looked down upon. Periods of nothing where he kept her out and said little of when he returned. A little more distant every time, his mind a little more closed to her, and she knew it was what he wanted but she still couldn’t help but be a little furious with him for it. But the collar remained, so she knew he hadn’t taken that fateful step away from her yet. Had to stop herself from begging him not to, and unsure if she was making a mistake by not doing so.

She snapped awake from a nap one day to a vivid feeling of _pack_ surging through him that had her up and dancing around the room with him, heart hammering. She couldn’t work out where he was, just that he was running, that there were others running too, and he was helplessly overwhelmed by the surge of minds around him.

_Where are you?_ she called, and didn’t expect an answer. He turned towards her, almost buzzing with excitement and adrenaline, his emotions surging when he recognised her touch. Washing over her, a wave of _emilyemilyemily_ as he dragged her against his mind and showed her it all. Tundra beneath his paws, permafrost and ice. The wolves around him. The caribou in front, trying to outrun them. It slowed, sweat steaming in the frozen air, nostrils flaring red.

Hunting. They were hunting.

He’d never hunted with a pack before.

He growled with the wolf next to him, circling, and she bowed down with her head on her front paws and tail stiff in the air at the rush of euphoric hunger that hit him. Not for the food that the animal offered or for the thrill of success but for pack and family and belonging and this, _just this I want this need this I’ve never had this_.

They leapt. Spencer on point, so he moved in to take it down from the side, paws leaving the ground. He struck, slipped, leapt away from the wide hoof that swung his way. She shuddered with the horror of that damage that hoof could do if it connected, but the pack moved with him and the caribou didn’t have a chance against them all, couldn’t focus to strike one of many.

Emily burst from the room, wired with every second-hand emotion he was slamming her with in his frenzied excitement, sprinting around the compound with half a howl readied in her chest. They struck again, fangs meeting flesh. She tasted the blood with him and whirled in the snow, kicking it up in a flurry. Her heart hammering and every part of her body on edge, stomach fluttering along. A spray of red and the animal dropped. Spencer moved back, falling into line behind the wolf ahead of him. Head lowered, she ducked with him as the bigger wolf glanced to him with approval of his submission. It was a dazed kind of submission, Spencer’s individual thoughts almost drowned out by the focused direction of the pack mind.

Distantly, part of her recoiled from that feeling. She’d felt it before. At the snow meet, or when running with Aaron, or hunting with the pack. It was a giving of self. It was _pack_.

_They’re not pack_ , that distant part of her cried, but it was soft and easily drowned out by the dying lows of the caribou as the pack brought it down. Spencer backed away as the animal died and the pack howled, his heart stumbling for a moment and then slamming twice to make up for it as the air filled with their song. A blink of feeling, the faintest whisper of her dismay, and he joined in. Gave in completely and rejoiced with them, falling away from her.

Standing alone in the snow, she withdrew from his mind before she could be pulled in and stared at nothing in particular. From the distant south, she could hear the rejoicing. If she focused enough, she could almost hear the distinct yip-howl of Spencer’s individual voice, the coyote in him that he tried so desperately to hide asserting itself in his song as he bared himself to strangers. And she felt sick, lost, alone. Wanted to join them.

Wanted to run from them.

Revoltingly, she wanted to run from _him_. Him in the moment when he’d teetered on joining them, when his mind had been more _other_ than Spencer. Him in the moment when he had joined them, in a way he’d never allowed himself back home with their _true_ pack.

_Aaron,_ she thought softly, and tried to remember his voice. Thought maybe she could, but wasn’t entirely sure. _You have no idea how much we need you…_

But the singing continued, so she slunk inside and fastened the shutters against it, closing out the world and everything in it that would see her lose herself.

He came home that night buzzing with his fur thick with the scent of coppery blood and sweat and unfamiliar wolves and _him_. Under it all, his scent was wild and vivid and alive in a way it hadn’t been since the night their seasons had thrown them together. He smelled…

Healthy. Vibrant. _Real_.

The realest thing in her closed in little world, and she tremored back from that blunt awareness of his vitality. Wondered what she smelled like in comparison, since she was sure she was fading away somehow. The ghost of Emily Prentiss. He paused, sensing her dismay.

_Emily?_ he asked, his voice husky/warm, and she shivered again. _Are you okay? Are you well? You’re not feeling sick, are you?_ Suddenly he was fussing again, his focus entirely on her like it had been in the morose weeks following their coupling. Except, this time, he was _talking_ , his voice excited and humming in her brain and her skin, and she ached with the reminder of who they’d used to be.

_I’m fine,_ she reassured him, and sniffed at his coat. _You need a shower. You smell like wet dog._

_Run with me first?_ he asked, skittering on the spot. _I’m still wired. Do you feel up to it?_

_I’m pregnant, not dead,_ she teased, darting to the exit with her heart in her mouth. Shoving away some cruel voice that pointed out how matter-of-factly she’d stated that, like she’d come to terms with it. Maybe she had. Maybe she never really would. _And I bet I can still outrun you, pipe-cleaner legs._

_You’re on,_ he barked, and chased her from the door. They ran, side-by-side, with him nipping at her shoulders. Running from the sick memory of him hunting; running from her fear of his temptation. Her pulse galloped with the thump of their paws, his panting breath rasping beside her, the sun curving down through a foggy sky to the distant horizon. Around them, the snow muffled everything but their footfalls, hid everything from them except each other and the hum of the fence. And, eventually, the fog fell and hid even that until she could look ahead and pretend they were all that existed in the world.

She skidded to a stop and he hurtled to a stop with her, leaping her back with a playful bark. She laughed at his gangly landing, tumbling over his own legs with his black-tipped tail waving, and then bowed when he spun to face her. Tongue lolling, he laughed with her and then bounced at her and around her. Paws frisking in the snow but never quite touching. In this moment, hidden from prying eyes by the eddying fog, she could forget her fear and his. Forget everything but the throb of her heartbeat, the giddy mix of their emotions.

He touched her mind first, playful, and she responded by tackling him. They hit the snow, tumbling into a drift with a _thumpf_ and a yelp when he realized how cold it was. Minds curled together, he stumbled up and raced for the warm inside, sauntering cheekily when she tried to catch up. On the way in, they brushed shoulders. An electric touch of skin that set her stomach fluttering again. Shaking globs of snow onto the recently mopped floor, he wiggled closer and ran his tongue over her ears, her forehead, ignoring her mock growl at his attentions.

_Stop fussing_ , she grumbled, and he replied _no_ in a voice that sunk straight to her core. She whined, pressed closer, felt that same soft/warm feeling in her hindquarters. Felt him suddenly quiver beside her, sensed his scent turn from _excitedalivejoyful_ to _arousedmalewant_. The mix of the hunt and his success and her mind wrapped around him and dragging him along with her fluctuating hormones all succeeding in reminding them both that they were alone but together and, most powerfully, on the brink of some primal experience that was older than anything they could possibly understand.

_Pair bonding chemicals,_ he said suddenly, pressing his muzzle to her ruff and breathing in deeply, one of his legs still hooked over her shoulder and pulling her tight to his chest. She let herself be pulled, curling into the warm-damp heat of his fur. _There’s a cocktail of chemicals surging through both of our brains right now urging us to complete courtship rituals to ensure our children have our complete parental attachment._

_Stop making this a science,_ she growled, unable to hide the rush of heat at the way his voice had wavered a little when saying _our children. We’ve been stuck here for fuck knows how long. Months, for sure, it feels. We’re horny, Spencer. That’s it._

_Mmm, horny doesn’t explain how completely my body craves you,_ he responded pertly, and she froze. _I asked Quinn to help me check. My cortisol levels are higher than average, testosterone rising similarly. Oxytocin, dopamine, and vasopressin are all going haywire as well. My brain is very focused on making sure that where you’re concerned, I’m as punch-drunk as possible. It’s remarkable, actually. Underneath the cocktail of neurotransmitters, I still logically know that you’re the same wolf. Emily, my friend. Aaron’s mate._ She shivered again at that, a spike of cold sinking through the hazy warmth of this moment, but he wasn’t done. _But it’s hard to think of that when I walk in here and all I can smell is **you** and… _ Now, he trailed off, and she knew was he was going to say. The lives she carried, the subtle ways they changed her scent, the way their pair bonding would have already altered it to declare her _his¸_ just as she could breathe in traces of her own claim on him. _And I want you. Just you. Always you._

In that moment, she wanted him too. Wanted the comfort that would offer her, the companionship. But the cold had sunk in deep, leeching away the warmth. He felt her emotions shift, turning morosely pensive, and leaned his muzzle down and breathed with her as she swallowed against his chest.

_Do you think we’re ever going to make it home?_ she asked in a whisper, and felt his throat work against her ear. She knew; they could have sex here, right now, and it would be good and comfortable and some release of the pain that both of them were hoarding tight. But it would be _just_ that. A release. It would have nothing to do with what they were to each other beyond what their brains wanted. She knew that, one day, that would probably happen. They’d fall together, find that release, and if they never made it home…

Maybe they could make it work.

But she wanted who they’d been more than she wanted some lust-based parody of it.

_I absolutely believe we will,_ Spencer asserted, and then he walked away. Not from her, he paused and twitched his head to invite her to follow. But away from what they’d almost given into. Some concession to the people who’d taken them that _yes, we’ll fall in line and it begins with us giving into our desires._

They showered the snow and the copper from their fur, and then they shook themselves dry and eventually, eventually, slunk into bed together, curled around each other in a jumble of limbs that wound so tight Emily wasn’t sure if it was her sides shifting as she breathed, or his. Hearts beating together, muzzles touching, they slept.

And she woke once, dazed, to a fluttering, dancing sensation deep in her belly. Lower. The same feeling as before, but twice as intense. _Spence,_ she mumbled sleepily, sensing his focus on her. Awake and alert by her side. _What’s this?_

He leaned in, sharing the sensation through her as she relaxed back into the warmth of their shared bed. _It’s them,_ he whispered as she dozed, too sleepy to register the mix of fear/resignation/awe in his words or even the words themselves. _Em… it’s **them**. They’re… real…_

When she woke, he didn’t speak of it and she wondered if it’d been a dream.

When he came home that night, his collar was gone. He spent the night as a human, dressed for the cold of their barely heated room and sitting in the bed with his gaze locked on the wall. Completely shutting her out. She raged at him, helplessly, for what felt like hours until giving up and crawling onto his lap, his fingers threading idly through the thick fur of her ruff.

In the morning, she felt him brush his mouth against her forehead, breathing something that could have been _I’m sorry_ or _don’t worry_ or maybe she just wanted it to be one of those things. The door was open, a man standing there, and she startled properly awake as Spencer got up to walk away. And she knew. She knew, somehow, that if he walked out that door, he wouldn’t return.

_Spence, don’t_ , she begged once, and then she staggered up to follow him. He ignored her. His foot scuffed the doorway. _Spencer!_

The man leading him out paused to look at her. He cocked an eyebrow, smirked. Maybe at her. Maybe at nothing. Maybe he didn’t even matter.

In that moment though, he mattered completely. His arm came out to grab the door, and she registered that. Registered the weapon he held, Spencer’s bowed shoulders, her own heart-wrenching fear that this was the end of something. Her gut kicked, her body surged, and this _man_ was between her and her _mate_.

They were slaves to their need to protect.

She lunged.


	14. Mother Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolation.

“This is very disappointing, Emily,” Lionel said, looking down on her with the kind of expression she just fucking _knew_ was designed to make her feel small and silly. “This behaviour… how does it reflect upon your pups? Or your mate? Spencer has been an avid member of our community, whole-heartedly allowing himself to extoll the virtues and morals we represent. But when people look at him, they won’t see his devotion… they’ll think ‘that’s the wolf with the mate who doesn’t respect him’. Have you thought of that, in this selfish path you’ve taken?”

_You scum,_ Emily snarled, pressing back against the wall of her _prison_ , this fucking shithole room with its delicate tiling and pretty books and _shit_. Her hackles were up, her canines bared, and if they weren’t holding guns on her, she’d be sorely tempted to end him right here and now, with her own jaws, just like she’d almost managed the night before. While Spencer had watched blankly. While he’d… _You fucking scumbag. You get the fuck away from him! Get out of his head! He is **not** one of **you**!_

Stupid. Antagonistic. If Spencer was faking his conversion—he _is_ faking his conversion, she thought firmly, despite him not making a move to stop them from dragging her away from protecting him—this was denouncing that.

But he’d stood aside and let them take her from him. Turned away from her. He wouldn’t…

Would he?

“For the sake of the innocent lives you carry within you,” Lionel said, turning away, “your punishment will be lessened. Complete isolation would be detrimental to your health and the health of our young. You will, however, be disallowed contact with the more vulnerable members of our community.”

_Like I have any fucking contact with your community anyway!_ Emily snapped, the anger rough and heady. _I’ve been in this goddamn **room** for months! _ The room was starting to haunt her dreams. She’d run and run and run and never find the exit, the walls and bed mocking her with her inability to escape.

“You will be fed, as you were when your season was impending,” Lionel recited. Around them, no one would make eye contact with her. “You will be given contact with a single _steadfast_ member of our community, once every three days, to ensure you are not starved completely of social interaction. Beyond that, your influence must be quarantined. We cannot allow pervasive and selfish ideals such as yours to flourish in our families, for they will undo us. Are we in agreement, brothers?”

The men around him nodded, slowly, their expressions blank. Emily snarled at them.

_Oh yes, you’re in the right here, you mongrels,_ she hissed, and turned her back on them. _Because I chose to be brought here, to this frozen shithole you call a home!_

“I’m sorry it has come to this,” Lionel finished, the door clicking open. “We will reconsider your isolation once per fortnight, your behaviour warranting. And, Emily?” She ignored him, pressing her muzzle against the wall and scrunching her eyes shut. “If this continues… well, we protect our own. Perhaps we were hasty in allowing your pairing with Spencer to continue. I am very tempted to dissolve your bond and allow him the freedom to find a more receptive mate. With that understanding, you will not be allowed contact with him while we consider what is best for him… and for our children.”

The door clicked shut and left her alone before she could register what he meant.

They were keeping Spencer away from her.

She turned and stared at the door, horror dripping down her spine to curl her tail between her legs, a submissively miserable pose she rarely allowed her body to assume. She wanted to scream, to attack the door, to howl and bark and snarl and tear this room down nail by nail. But there was no point. Her energy drained, leaving her shivering in the silent space that was now truly a cage. It was almost more than she could manage to walk slowly to the bed and curl up within a corner of it, his scent and hers still thick in the bedding. She breathed that in and it hammered home. She was completely alone. Absolutely.

And no one was coming for her.

 

* * *

 

They were as good as their word. Twice a week, one of the community members came—always in human form—and chattered to her about the work being done around the settlement, about the inane lives occurring around her, about everything she was being kept away from. And she hated it, but she listened.

God, did she listen.

It was always a different person. They weren’t allowing her to form any kind of close bond—not that she could anyway, since she couldn’t talk back while she was trapped as a wolf. And she knew why they’d collared her, knew that she could have deliberately aborted the pups by forcing a shift if they hadn’t, but they were also doing a damn good job keeping her trapped in her own mind with it as well. Always a different person, different stories, all blabbering about the _lives_ they had.

She found herself dreaming of her own pack more and more as Spencer’s scent faded from the room. The only way to tell time was by the shift of the sun outside—and that wasn’t really a valid technique anymore either, because the sun had stopped going down at all. The polar night was a dreadful memory, replaced with this bizarre midnight sun that left her feeling confused and unsettled and desperate for some kind of bearing.

_You’re gaslighting me,_ she realized one day, carefully trying to count the hours between her visitors arriving and realizing that it had been longer than three days. She’d had… six visitors? Perhaps. Since the beginning of her isolation. Six visitors, meaning eighteen days, meaning… but it felt like so much _longer_. _You’re fucking with my sense of time? How long have I been here? How long has it been! Tell me!_

But the older woman just kept knitting away steadily at the booties she was working on, proudly chattering about her grandsons and how well they were growing, how clever they were—all six of them, plus two granddaughters, _a small litter that year, love, but we’re making up for it now!_

If the light caught the glass windows right on the bathroom door, she could examine a faded, indistinct reflection of herself. See the desperate eyes and the rounded sides of a wolf that wasn’t Emily Prentiss anymore, but some ghostly version of her. She stared at that reflection after the older lady had left, trying to force down how _tempted_ she’d been to beg the stupid bitch to stay longer, not to leave…

If she squinted, she could almost see two black blurred wolves staring back at her from the reflection. Almost. _Hi, Aaron,_ she whispered, and laughed, and felt silly and crazy and a little shattered. _How are you doing? Better than me? Better than Spencer, I bet. They took him away. I lost him, Aaron, I couldn’t hang onto him and…_

She had to turn away. She couldn’t.

_He’s always been a lonely wolf_ , she told the muddy permafrost outside, staring blankly through the window into a brown washed yard and the cloudy horizon.

“It’s been a fortnight,” said Lionel, walking in and smiling down at her. Emily was slumped on the floorboards, her muzzle on her paws and her stomach cramping. Listless, drained, and very aware that there was a frantic kind of pattering going on that promised that she wasn’t as alone as she could be.

_It’s been longer than a fortnight_ , Emily replied lethargically, but Lionel just kept smiling blankly at her. _Don’t lie to me…_

But how would she know? Maybe she was wrong. She _was_ crazy.

_It’s been longer than a fortnight,_ she repeated to herself, and closed her eyes to block out the hated man’s face.

“You’ve been a good girl, Emily,” he was saying, crouching by her. A hand touched her ears, stroked them. “Such a good girl.”

_You move so quickly,_ Aaron had teased her once. _I’d hate to be at the receiving end of that strike._

She struck. Bit down and was validated by a gush of coppery blood.

Lionel withdrew without another word, closing the prison door behind her.

_You’d be proud,_ Emily told the black wolf watching from the bathroom door. _I’m not submitting. I’m not going to **heel** for them._

But he didn’t answer, and she hadn’t really expected him to.

The next ‘fortnight’ felt like it took a month. Emily heard all about a pipe that burst in Anthony’s kitchen, she learned about how well the fifth-grade class was doing this year, a small chatter about ‘that sexy new professor’ that made her heart ache and her stomach flip. She heard about the library getting some new books in—the girl who rambled about that was so sweetly _excited_ by the prospect of new books, barely sixteen with braces and thick freckles across a button-nose, that Emily couldn’t help but soften her usual ‘aggressively ignoring you’ posture.

The girl came back, six or possibly eight visitors later. Emily was ready.

She’d found a book, pushing it onto the girl’s lap and tapping her tail hopefully on the floor. The girl looked worried, her eyes skipping to the door as though expecting a reprimand, but none came. Outside the window, the sun was steadfast. Night was a distant memory, just like the green and grey of home, the verge where she’d run with her pack, her family’s song.

“This is a book on the polar regions?” the girl read slowly. “Is this really what you want me to read to you?” Emily nodded eagerly, circling on the spot because she wasn’t above showing off her pregnancy to invoke a desired response. And it _was_ obvious now, even under her winter coat. It worked. The girl began to read and Emily eagerly listened, although it took almost the entire day for her to reach the bit that she _actually_ wanted.

“Beginning early May, the sun remains above the horizon the entire day, and the phenomenon known as the midnight sun is observed. The sun does not set for about eighty days, until the beginning of August—it’s very cool,” the girl said, with a bright smile. “We celebrate it when it begins and when it ends. It’s called a White Night. Maybe they’ll let you out in time to celebrate its end?” She sounded hopeful.

Emily thumped her tail a few more times, her head buzzing with shock.

Hours later, she was alone. The black wolf watched her from the bathroom mirror and the window, and after she’d run in the frigid air outside until her lungs and muscles were screaming, she slumped in front of it and tried to meet that dark gaze. _So, when the sun sets, I’ve— **we’ve** —been here…_ She trailed off that thought, horror twitching her skin all the way to from her hips to her muzzle. _Seven months… oh my god, Aaron. Oh my god. You think we’re dead, don’t you?_

But they could be, she realized. If she reached for Spencer, even through the weak remnants of their fading pair bond, she felt nothing. Just a vague sense of something there, some living presence. Or maybe she was sensing herself. Maybe he’d died and left her alone. Maybe she was dead and this was just what came after.

She slept, constantly, desperate for snatches of dreams when she could _almost_ hear their voices.

_You’re your own wolf, Emily Prentiss,_ the black wolf whispered, running ahead of her into the white-out dark of a winter night. When she tried to chase him, other wolves gusted out of the snow, only to be torn away by the screeching winds. A white-gold wolf with blue eyes. A puppy that howled because he was alone. A wolf with fur the colour of butterscotch that turned his back and walked away from her. _Why can’t you just belong?_

She howled, in her dreams and in her life, but no one answered. Sometimes, wolves around her sung. Distant but alive. She joined in once, desperate to be heard. They stopped immediately and her voice trailed into nothing.

She howled for Spencer and he didn’t answer.

Howled for Aaron and he couldn’t answer.

The black wolf went quiet. People came and went. Emily stopped caring. What did it matter?

“She has been good,” someone murmured overhead, and hands touched her. Unused to the touch, she twitched away. They followed, pressing down, unstoppable, and she submitted to them. Let them stroke her ears and her ruff, fingers tracing the collar on her throat. The only time she even bothered to open her eyes was when the hands moved to her belly, to the unthinkable beings she carried in there. Then she growled, not because she loved them, because she didn’t think she felt _anything_ for them, but because she knew she had to protect them despite that. “I think she’s ready to reconsider.”

The voices faded. She didn’t bother looking for them.

But there were more that persisted. A tenacious influx of alien emotions that assailed her constantly, not letting her sleep, not letting her just be _nothing_. She didn’t want to be Emily right now. She ate, she exercised, she slept, but that was it. Being Emily meant dealing with everything Emily Prentiss was dealing with. Spencer’s betrayal, Aaron’s grief, her own misery, JJ and Rossi and her mom and the countless others who would have been impacted by her abduction…

It meant dealing with the midnight sun and the prison yard she was in.

_Go away_ , she snapped at the thoughts one day, and they fell quiet. One of the pups kicked angrily, or possibly two. She couldn’t really tell in the jumble of pokey bits what was a paw or a nose or which it belonged to. She shook that feeling off angrily, racing outside to try and run despite her shambling, heavy gait these days. And she ran, until spots danced in her eyes and her breath steamed in the freezing air, and the world dimmed around her.

Except, it wasn’t her exhaustion dimming it. She looked up just in time to see the sun dipping low, vanishing below the horizon.

_August_ , she thought, and sat down with a _thump_ on the frozen ground beneath her. Ears ringing, she could hear waves distantly, sea birds squawking. The rare sound of a motor on the air somewhere far. Seven months. Perhaps a little more. A lifetime.

There was no pretending Aaron was here when standing in the middle of the yard. No false assurances. No black wolf waiting.

She howled, mournful. Not sure what the sound was as it tore from her throat, just that it was loneliness and pain and that her heart hurt with it. At the sudden noise, the pups startled. She shivered at the bizarre feeling, a strange, new kind of shock reaching her mind. The alien emotions clamoured for a second.

And she realized what they were.

_Holy fuck_ , she thought, and stopped howled with a trailing cough. It was them. It was the pups.

They were _thinking_.

And in that shocked silence, someone answered. A single howl, short and cut off quickly. Just as lonely and sad. It was just for her, a desperate _you’re not alone_ , and there was a distinct yipping end to it.

_Spencer_ , she thought, and wondered if he’d be able to hear the pups too. Felt her hackles lift at the idea of him being near them, nothing but a stranger to her now. Felt her heart ache at the idea of him welcoming them into the world. And, suddenly, the pups were real, living little creatures in her mind. Not just the unexpected weight she was being forced to carry. If she focused, she could almost pick them apart. Two twined little minds, possibly, intently fixated on each other. And one that was sharper, louder, and set up a furious pattern of kicking paws when she brushed her mind against it.

_Go away, Mom,_ she could imagine that pup growling. _This is our space. I’m already sick of sharing._

She began to laugh at the idea. Perhaps they’d soon start complaining about the cramped conditions, or muttering about the food. She could just imagine Spencer—

She stopped laughing.

Spence _had_ replied to her. That was him! She knew it had to be—she didn’t know his howl like she knew Aaron’s or JJ’s or Dave’s, but she remembered it distantly from the nights they’d mated and the day he’d hunted and _that was him_. He was _alive._

And she needed to see him.

She moved inside on numb legs. She needed to get their attention. Their priority was… the pups. They wanted Spencer’s pups, because even if he proved impossible to control, if their hold on him weakened… they’d have three malleable little minds that could be every bit as clever as he was to shape into the wolves they needed. She was just the meat incubator supplying those pups, the fulcrum they were using to—even distantly—control Spencer.

He might be indoctrinated, brainwashed, _lost_ , but he was still Spencer. And Spencer had never been able to bear seeing the people he loved hurt.

The air inside the room felt cloistered, hot. Some of the people tidied when they were here. Mopped, changed the bedding. Kept it fresh for her. But it didn’t feel like that today. It felt small and over-warm, and she dragged a white-blue sheet from the bed and sat heavily on it, taking two shallow breaths before doing what she had to.

_Everyone fears the mad wolf,_ she thought sadly, and snapped her jaws closed around her foreleg. Once.

Twice.

Sharp teeth, evolved to tear, caught her skin. Snipped through like she was biting down on her dinner. She closed her eyes against the red on the floor and lurched up to try to shake off the wave of _dizzypainsurprise_ that rushed her. The pups kicked. The floor wobbled. She wobbled.

Opened her eyes. It wasn’t bad. Just bare slices. It wasn’t bad enough.

She bit again, shook. Felt pain.

Broadcasted it.

Felt the foggy emptiness around her shatter as minds turned abruptly towards her cry. And she bit again, scented blood. Watched it patter down. Leapt up in a parody of the dance her and Aaron and her and Spencer had wound together, patterning the room with red.

Anger rushed, hot and hard. Anger and hate.

She threw herself at the door with a screaming bark, claws biting the surface. And again. And again, with bruising force, before turning on her forelegs again. Not enough to scar, not enough to _kill_ , but they didn’t know that.

All they could see would be the mad wolf going madder.

She broadcasted harder, lashing out at all the minds pressing close with suffocating worry and shock: _this is what you’ve done!_ she screamed at them. _This is you! All of you, with your fucking community and your—_

She had to stop because the door flung at her again, someone coming in. She didn’t wait to see who it was, just attacked. Plan out the window— _hurt self, get doctor. Possibly Quinn. They’ll send Spence to talk his mad mate down, see Spence, see if he’s alive, talk some fucking **sense** into him—_all she wanted now was to keep fighting, to keep hating, to tear the world down around her.

They hit the ground, _hard_ , and she went for his throat, sinking teeth through the thick lining of his parka until it touched skin. His hands pushed against her and then released. Hit the ground under them with a _thunk_ as he went limp and waited for the fatal bite. Startled by his submission, she looked at him.

_Spencer_ , she whispered, staring into his eyes, and then she crumpled. A helpless heap of wolf on his body, she shuddered against him as blood pooled on his waterproof coat and funnelled down to the floor. _Spence…_

But there was nothing more to be said. He couldn’t hear her. There were men behind him, guns, someone shouting. He still said nothing, just brought his arms up to wrap around her, his heart skipping a few beats when he realized how much _more_ of her there was to hold. And they lay there, his arms around her, as wolves clamoured around them.

_Help her!_

_What’s wrong with her?_

_I told them she wasn’t okay—is she okay?_

_They should let her out! I told you. We should have told them to let her out!_

_Shh, love. You’re loud. Shh._

_No! I want to be loud! It’s monstrous—_

“I’m staying with her,” Spencer said piercingly, suddenly, and rolled over to deposit her gently on the floor. “You said she’d be looked after if I complied!” His scent was rough, furious. Dangerous, sparking with a surge of adrenaline that hinted he was close to rage.

“She is being looked after.” Lionel. Emily rumbled at the sound of his voice. “Her illness is a flaw within herself, not any fault of our own. Some wolves are just too tainted by their previous lives to—”

“I’m staying,” Spencer repeated, and looked at the room. _That_ room. She couldn’t. She _couldn’t._

_Don’t make me go back please don’t make me go back, Spencer please no, not the room,_ she realized she was sobbing, rambling, and everyone could hear her. Some agent. Silence yawned, but not the deliberate silence of the past few months, but a frozen horror.

“No,” Lionel replied coldly. “You’re too new. Too easily swayed back to desolation. Would you turn your back on us, Spencer?” His arms closed tighter around her, trembling, but she felt him falter. He was going to do it.

He was going to betray her again.

For a heartbeat, she wished she’d bitten down.

“Quinn will stay with her,” said a sudden voice. They all turned. Ethan, his own clothes hastily arranged and a rifle on his hip. A wolf stood by his side, mousey-brown with ragged fur around her throat. “She can’t be alone. She needs medical care and if she’s this distressed, the pups will need monitoring. Spencer can stay with me to ensure he isn’t tempted back.”

Lionel scowled, uncomfortable. But there was a murmur around them, a whisper of _that’s fair, why are you punishing her this much_? and he was cornered. “I’d prefer if he stayed elsewhere,” he began, but Spencer spoke up.

“Ethan is no more my brother than any other wolf here,” he said monotonously, his eyes downcast. “Our previous lives have no hold over us. It doesn’t matter where I go, but please, only if my mate is _cared for_. You promised.” The downcast look shifted, turned simmering and bitter, but he masked it in a moment.

Hope flared.

“Fine,” Lionel spat. “Just for tonight—”

“Until she’s better,” Ethan cut in, and the men shifted closer to him. Emily watched with interest, filing that away in the part of her brain that still knew about behaviour and optimism and planning for an uncertain future. “A night won’t help her. It’s this, or you allow her into the community. No one is happy with this arrangement, Lionel—there are those who would see her released tonight.”

Lionel looked down on her, his expression thin and tight, and then he turned and strode away. “Clean that up!” he threw back over his shoulder, before vanishing through the doors.

Spencer pulled close, nestling his mouth against the tufts of her ear and skimming his fingers over her belly longingly. She froze, unsure how to react to this sudden intense touching after months of _nothing_ , his breath damp and sour on her fur. Her ear flicked as something dripped and touched it, he huffed air against her and choked down something as the men moved closer to pull him away.

“We celebrate the snow,” he whispered suddenly into her fur, his voice thick. “Don’t forget about Andrei Rublev.” And then he was standing in a flurry of clothes and striding away. She was left, a ghost of her former self, on the cement floor.

Quinn tapped forward, nudging her with her nose. _They would have preferred I stayed human for this,_ she whispered on a private thought, for Emily alone. _But this way we can talk. Come on._

_Not in the room,_ Emily gasped, her body shuddering. The pups were moving frantically, her insides moving with them it felt like, and it was a horrible feeling when added to the surge of throbbing pain that was her legs. _God, not again…_

_I know, it’s awful,_ Quinn pleaded, nudging her closed again, and her voice was sharp and desperate but, most of all, _honest_. _Please, Emily. You’re not alone. You’ve never been alone. We’re here._

“What is she saying to her?” one of the men asked suddenly, so Emily lurched to her feet and staggered back into the bloodied cage, letting herself tumble heavily into the bed to stare at the open door with a gaping mouth and heaving sides.

“Just explaining that we’re going to help her adjust to the community properly,” Ethan said blankly. The same blank voice that Spencer had used, Emily noted, and something sharp picked up in her chest. The _exact_ same voice that Ethan was lying with now, was the one Spencer had used with Lionel…

But not with her.

_Remember Andrei Rublev._

_When does the snow fall again here?_ Emily asked, because it had barely snowed for months now, and when it had it had melted away to a brackish slush. The temperature never above freezing, some snow remained hidden in shadowed corners of the yard, but it was grey washed and dirty. _When does the weather change?_

_October,_ Quinn said, her ears perked forward as Ethan slid a medical kit inside the room and stepped out to let the door close. _Why?_

A month.

She could wait a month.

_I’ve always loved the snow,_ she said as Quinn shifted back and got to work stitching the tears on her legs. Emily watched her chest as the other woman breathed, the shift of the scar on her shoulder. Antiseptic stung the air and her nose, her legs were numb, her brain fuzzy. She might have slept. More of a crash than a sleep, but when she woke the sun was gone, the room was dark, and there was a brown mouse of a wolf curled to her side with her ears twisted towards Emily’s abdomen.

_When you exercise, don’t tear the stitches more,_ Quinn sent softly, her eyes flicking to Emily’s bandaged forepaws. _Was that an actual attempt to hurt yourself, or were you trying to get my attention?_

_I don’t know,_ Emily admitted, her stomach growling. Hungry, and there was a bowl of cold soup by the wall from the dinner she’d slept through. Not hungry enough to get it yet, she closed her eyes and tried to order her thoughts. _I don’t even know if I can trust you. I don’t think I can trust Spencer or Ethan. He told me himself, males are a slave to their need to protect._

She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.

_Yes,_ Quinn said finally, after a long, uncertain pause. _They are that. He thinks he is, you know. Protecting you. You… when you hurt yourself today, he panicked. Utterly panicked. I think they were keeping him deliberately in the dark about your condition._

_But you knew_ , Emily accused hotly, standing and staggering over to the soup on legs that didn’t want to leg anymore. _You knew and you kept it from him. You lot are testing all the water from this fucking place, and I bet my piss is raw cortisol right now. I’m not Spencer, but I **know** extreme stress shows in urinalysis. _ She slowed her voice, turned her face away, dug deep for the bitterness that she’d developed and laced her tone with it: _not that he’d give a shit anyway, now that he has his new **family** to cosset. Have they found him a new mate yet? Some pretty vapid thing who thinks he’s just **swell**._

The wall rattled as wind blew against it, gusting angrily around their compound. Emily lapped at the cold soup, wistfully remembering having hands.

_Spencer is a very single-minded wolf,_ Quinn said, and Emily’s throat tightened as she took that statement apart in her mind and examined it from every angle. _He is resolutely determined to find his way in this new land before anything else… the snow offers new chances for change. Covering the tracks of our previous mistakes._

That wasn’t subtle. Emily lifted her head and looked back at the smaller wolf, her own heart hammering. Quinn’s gaze skittered about nervously, her scent notably tense. As though worried about being overheard.

_Why did Ethan sterilize himself?_ Emily asked, straightening so her greater size loomed intimidatingly over the other wolf. _You are too—but you carried a litter. You’ll miscarry any future litters, we can only bear them once, and yet you dosed yourself with an experimental drug._

_Testing the serum,_ Quinn responded instantly. _They would have used him as a stud. He was the beginning of this, you see. Not the abductions—they’ve been happening for years. Longer than you know, far longer than twelve years. They used to wait until they crossed the border to grab them, and they still do. That’s how they got Ethan. And when they realized he was, well, how he is… much like your Spencer… they knew they needed more of him. So, they put him with me, the first time they’ve forced a union. And he was horrified. And he did that to himself and it almost killed him. I refined it, used it on myself, made it look natural. Something catching, perhaps some genetic flaw. So that they wouldn’t see what we’d done, for making ourselves incapable of creating life… it’s a great sin to them. But it’s also why they quarantine new females, so I guess that’s my fault too, in a way…_

There was no hesitation in this story, it surged forth in a torrent that implied that she was desperate to tell _someone_. That she’d been bottling it up for years.

_How old are your pups?_ Emily asked finally, not asking the other question on the tip of her tongue— _do you love him despite what he did to you? did you forgive him? —_ because she knew the answer already.

_Four,_ she replied, closing her eyes and looking away. _And I’ve never held them. They won’t let me near them, probably for fear that I’ll test them to see which is mine. I have suspicions. They let Spencer teach them, you know._ Emily blinked at that, somehow not being able to picture Spencer surrounded by four year olds learning to count. _He requested it, said it was part of his learning to welcome his new role as a father. They were delighted, but Lionel stepped in and removed him from the position when they saw him with one of the boys._ _A-Arlo. His name is Arlo._ Emily watched as the smaller wolf’s head dipped back up in the dawning light of the short night ending, their eyes meeting. _He looks just like Spencer. Just like him. God, I didn’t even realize how alike they were until I saw Spencer holding him…_

Emily didn’t know what to say to that.

_I’m sorry,_ Quinn said eventually, when the silence grew too heavy. _We’re… people have left here before, you know. Escaped. Some might even have managed it. But… Ethan tried. Before we were mated, and they hunted us down and dragged us back. The Reids are special to them. Improvement of the race is the next step, they believe. And Ethan’s… Ethan tried to hide Spencer, he really did. And we thought Spence was safe, in DC, but then you both showed up asking questions with the Sandstone wolves. Lionel has had men there for years, working the nearby train-yard. It’s how they got you out. But we knew they wouldn’t let you go without a fight, and Spencer didn’t want to risk you getting hurt or drawn into it all and—_

She paused suddenly, seemingly waiting for a response.

But Emily had never been good at forgiveness. She remained silent. The moment stretched and stretched and tore, until Quinn shivered away, her expression shuttering with everything that wasn’t said. The room closed in around them.

Quinn huffed, sinking her muzzle onto her paws. _I hate it in here. It reminds me of…_

_Yeah._ Emily didn’t need an answer to that. _I don’t think you should stay here._ It was hard to say, but not as impossible as it would have been just hours ago. There was something in Quinn’s words, or maybe in the intent way Spencer had whispered to her… something that made this _possible_.

_I will for tonight._ Quinn inched over, letting Emily back into the bed next to her and cautiously lowering her head down beside her. _Maybe we should have talked him into bringing you into this. I think… I think maybe you’re stronger than he is._

The pups kicked three times before settling, their minds a low buzz of contentment. Emily focused on them, curling around to cock her muzzle towards her abdomen. _Maybe,_ she said, the bandages rough under her paws. _I’m going to kick his ass if it turns out he left me here for three months out of some sexist male pride._

Quinn laughed softly but didn’t answer.

Emily stared out the window and waited for the snow.

 

* * *

 

She howled alone the first night the snow blew in, and he didn’t come.

She howled alone the second.

On the third, a blizzard fell thick and fast and pushed her inside. The pups kicked with her anger, railing against the world she despised, the wolves in it, everything that had left her here to rot. She snarled at the deep scratches in the door, snarled at the memory of his voice, and when she saw the black wolf watching her from the bathroom door, she snarled and turned her back on him too.

She slept and didn’t dream and when she jerked awake, a man leaned over her.

“Shh,” said Spencer, his hand on her jaw. Above them, the vents were silent. His breath frosted the air, his face barely visible in his thick winter clothes. The lights were out. “Shh, Em. Come on, get up. We’re running—now!”

She staggered up, following him out the exterior door into the outer yard. The blizzard slammed into them and she stumbled. He caught her, his gloved hands tight on her ruff, and practically dragged her into the flurrying snow. Gusts of white whipped them one way and the next as they ran for the fence—she almost cried out at him to be _careful_ , her paws slipping into the snow—and scrambled through the neatly cut wire. He pulled her through, his mouth covered and eyes glittering inside the hood. Lashes white-frosted, he trembled and she fell heavily onto him and wriggled off. They stumbled up, his gloved hands fumbling in the snow, and she thought, _this is suicide._ The world was white. Nothing but white and the fence behind them, the polar night approaching. Inside her, the pups were silent. Sleeping in this moment, as though they could sense their end approaching. And she thought, _at least it’ll be peaceful_ , and imagined shivering herself to sleep in his arms. Maybe that was his plan, kneeling in the snow until they froze.

But then he was up, this stranger in his dark parka and his scent masked by the weight of his clothes. Up with a snow-dusted rope in his hands, the other finding her ruff and hauling her along as they followed it into the white.

Within minutes, the fence was gone.

Within minutes, he was all that remained of her world. Just the hand on her ruff and her eyes scrunched shut against the snow, the cold ripping through even her own thick fur as she sunk into drifts that were growing deeper with every step. And this continued, paw in front of paw, hand over hand, until a shadow loomed ahead that turned into black that turned into the yawning mouth of a warehouse door. They staggered inside, snow gusting around them, deaf and blind. Spencer shoved the door closed against the worst of the wind as Emily tried to shake her senses back into working.

“Move quickly,” someone said, and Emily whirled with a growl squeezing out between clenched teeth to find Ethan tearing a tarp from a blue and white snowmobile, his expression tight. Spencer was working fast next to him, hooking up a laden stretcher on runners to the back. She inched closer to stare as the two men dragged the machine closer to the door, Spencer scrambling into a horrifically neon protective suit and adding a helmet and goggles to his outfit.

“Get Em in,” came his muffled voice, turning to stare nervously at the back door. “Is it gassed up?”

“Full tank should get you over a hundred miles,” Ethan confirmed, gesturing Emily closer. She went, the collar heavy around her throat and bitterly cold. He glanced it at, wincing, but made no move to remove it. It likely required a tool, something they didn’t have time to prioritise, but she swallowed back disappointment all the same. “I’m going to strap you in, Emily. It has a quick release—here—if he tips it.”

“Which is likely,” Spencer muttered. Even muffled, it was audible. Emily groaned. “Get these on—if we need to run, our paws will be shredded by ice.”

She stared at what he was clumsily passing to Ethan. Booties. They were fucking booties. And _goggles_. Doggy goggles.

_If you tell Dave about this, I’m going to kick your ass,_ she promised Spencer as she lifted her paws for Ethan to slip them on and felt the googles snap tight around her head, cutting off her peripherals. Jumping up onto the sled in the centre of the secured bags, she lay flat for the waterproof blanket to cover her, the straps snapping in tight. In here, she was blind, only able to shift her head around a little to peer at the orange windshield and the shadows of Ethan and Spencer moving overhead. She felt sick. Excited. Terrified. A little unreal. The snowmobile bumped, the door grinding open. She felt more than saw Ethan and Spencer moving close to each other, the rustle of clothes pressing together.

“Come with us,” she heard Spencer breathe, his voice painfully young and raw. “Ethan…”

“You have to go,” Ethan replied, stepping away. “Now. Go!”

The machine roared, Emily’s ears ringing with pain, and surged forward. White on white surrounded them in seconds. Instantly blind, the cold slamming down on them like a knife and wind ripping around their ears.

She looked back and the compound was already gone. They were running.

They were _free_.


	15. Penultimate Profile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron**

He couldn’t falter. There were too many wolves needing him.

They’d never had a pack leader before. Not explicitly. They hadn’t needed one—they were a casual, fluctuating group of wolves who were legally bound to hide the fact that they even considered themselves pack. Hotch had always respected that, because his feelings about the zoning laws were tightly wound and hidden deep.

Until now.

“Fortnightly pack meets,” he told JJ, seeing her eyes widen. “All wolves of the area. Silent, secretive. And I want a roll call taken.” The news spread quickly, in whispers and gossip, and the first meet was cautiously speculative. A dozen wolves, none comfortable. The next was better. As was the next. And Hotch patrolled them. He ensured that the wolves returned to their homes in groups of four or more, and he made sure every wolf was home safe before he returned to his own. His final loop of the circuit, when they weren’t on cases, wound past Rossi’s, JJ’s, Jessica’s, Emily’s—despite it being empty—and Reid’s.

Reid’s, he did as penance. It was just outside of the area he considered _his_. And niggling in his mind was the thought, _maybe if I **had** considered it mine… maybe it wouldn’t be empty as well_.

And then he would go home. To the house where Jessica waited with his son. Two loops of the outside as a wolf, nose to the ground for any unknown wolfish scents. Then inside to his family.

His sleep since she was taken was fitful, startling awake to every sound. In wolf form he’d lay with his ears perked and his muzzle furrowed. Ready. Alert. In his ruffled bed that had long ago lost _her_ scent, he curled around his son and guarded.

“S’posed to sleep in my bed, Dad,” Jack said sleepily every night when Hotch nudged him toward his room. But Hotch’s room was to the back, the windows impossible to reach from the ground. “Not your bed.”

Hotch didn’t listen. He kept his pack close and his son closer. They would not lose another wolf.

And he refused to lose hope.

 

* * *

 

**> To Emily: _I’m texting a phone that’s turned off in evidence lock-up. The tech assigned to these cases will very likely see these messages. I don’t care. I know you didn’t leave by choice. I want you to know I’ve never given up on you._**

**> To Emily: _I love you. I’m still looking._**

**> To Emily: _Whatever they’ve done to Reid, we’re still looking. We’ll fix this._**

**> To Emily: _It’s been six months today. I know that you’re alive. Jack has so much to show you when you come home. He’s drawing now._**

**> To Emily: _Seven months. Almost eight. Please be alive. Don’t make me bury you._**

He dropped his phone, eyes skirting away from the line of unanswered texts. Around him, the empty remains of take-out containers, piles of folders, pages and pages of notes. Across the round table, the plasma showed Reid’s smiling face on pause.

“Aaron?” came Gideon’s voice from behind him. Hotch hunched his shoulders forward, closing gritty eyes against the rebuke he knew was coming. The room smelled of sweat, clothes worn too long, stale food. His breath was coffee-sour, his skin oily when he scrubbed his fingers across it. “How long have you been in here?”

“I don’t know,” Hotch admitted, snapping his eyes open and turning. His suit jacket and tie hung from the back of the chair. Gideon might not be able to smell the desperation on his skin, but he could read the room like a book. “I’m running in circles.”

Gideon nodded slowly, his briefcase knocking against the wall as he leaned in. Hotch waited for the _go home_ or the _you need to let this go_ or even the _you did the right thing by stepping aside from your leadership position if this is how you handle stress._

“What angle are you approaching it from?” he asked, looking at the screen of the video they’d all memorised. Footsteps pattered up the hall behind him as he stepped in, Blake pausing to stare before slipping away. Hotch glanced out the window, saw bright light dawning between the shutters of the blinds. “Perhaps fresh eyes would help.”

“I—” Hotch stopped and pressed his knuckles to his eyes. He didn’t even know anymore. Evidence of coercion, evidence of assimilation… there was plenty of the second, little of the first. Even to their eyes, Reid seemed fully indoctrinated. There was nothing to suggest his words were false, or that they were _true_. They could all be lies. Hotch just didn’t _know_. “I don’t know him well enough to make a profile one way or another.”

“We do,” said a quiet voice. Blake, reappearing, with Morgan behind her. And behind _him_ , Hotch twitched to see his team approaching warily. “You didn’t have to do this alone, Agent Hotchner.”

Gideon looked at him. The room filled slowly, Rossi closing the door firmly behind him. Finally, he broke the silence. “Right,” Rossi said gruffly. “Let’s sort out what you’ve done so far, Aaron. Garcia, be a peach and get some fresh coffee, would you? JJ, grab some active cases and make it look like we’re working in here. Morgan, Blake—both of you put headsets on, ignore the rest of us, and I want fresh views on that video, on Reid’s behaviour, his surroundings. Anything you spot. I _know_ you all wrote your own profiles on it when it came in—I want them all in. Gideon?”

Gideon looked at him and Rossi faltered, entirely unsure of whether he _could_ order the man around. “Aaron, show me what you’ve done and then go home to get some sleep,” Gideon said firmly. “Trust your team to carry on when you can’t. You’re not alone in this.”

They all looked at him, heads nodding. For the first time in seven months, he believed them.

They went back through the evidence the team assigned to the case had compiled. There was little. They wrote profiles, discarded them. Profiles on the wolves who’d taken them—but there was no real profile to be made. Blake worked on a geographical profile of the area they’d been taken, her brow furrowed.

When he returned hours later, barely rested, they made a profile on Reid. _Loner. Reclusive. Isolated. Shunned. Vulnerable._

Hotch felt sick looking at it.

“From outside eyes, it doesn’t look promising,” Gideon said. “We’ve got a man on the outskirts looking in, has a singular close relationship—with Prentiss. Part of a species biologically motivated to form large, close-knit family groups, and yet he’s alone. That’s a definite recipe for possessive, irrational behaviour to form centred around that bond. He comes from a pack renowned for their strong stance on mating and bonding traditionally, he would have been raised to those strict morals. Likely indoctrinated from an early age to believe in the absolute correctness of his pack’s views, that to be a wolf is to be paired. Here— ‘ _We have no interest in returning to a society who bond selfishly and hatefully solely in order to bring joy to themselves.’_ This is a learned lesson. He’s intent when he recites it, his body language is clear. Scripture that parrots this can be found in his pack’s schoolhouses, Garcia has found webpages and personal blogs from other Sandstone wolves who state similar views, if slightly less fervent.”

“Look closer,” Morgan argued. They were throwing the profile back and forth, Gideon standing on the side of the people who believed unquestionably that Reid and Emily had left of their own volition. “You say he’s indoctrinated—but here, his history. He was enrolled in a Vegas public school with his brother _away_ from his pack’s traditional schools. His mother raised them alone, his father absent. And his mother isn’t a wolf—she’s coyote blood. They’re new world shifters, they don’t follow old lines.”

“When he was ten, his father took custody of them,” Gideon rebutted. “In the three years before he left for college, that’s plenty of time to—”

“No,” Hotch said softly. They looked at him. “His mother was ill, that’s why William Reid took the boys back and inducted them into pack life outside of Vegas. But Reid still went to college, out of state. Caltech is in California—a progressive state with progressive wolves. If he was subscribed to their beliefs, he wouldn’t have gone.”

“His brother didn’t go.” Gideon watched them all. “Come on, everyone. We need the Bureau behind us on this—we need to prove that the video is coerced. These are all things that they’ll use as evidence against that. Diana’s illness, Reid’s isolation. Even Prentiss herself—” Hotch jolted at that, evidently a conversation that had taken part without him being there, “—had a rocky adolescence. Fortunately, her family connections mean that that’s almost completely covered up, but if people start digging with intent…”

Hotch stood, his head whirling with information and the tired back-and-forth. “I’ll be back,” he said stiffly, and slipped from the room. Almost to his car before a thump of feet and a whiff of cologne announced Dave following him.

“We going to Emily’s?” Rossi asked cheerfully, sliding into the passenger side without waiting for an answer. “Good. She’s our missing piece. We’ve ripped Spencer’s life apart, time for her turn.”

Hotch shuddered. He didn’t want to do this. It was her home, her privacy.

But he had to.

Her tags hung around his neck like an accusation. Cleaned of blood and grime and the red dirt of Nevada. They drove in quiet with Dave occasionally murmuring something about the case, the windows rolled down against the summer air that pushed in. Emily owned her apartment. It would remain in limbo until her death was declared in absentia or evidence of her defection was procured. It, like Reid’s place, was silent. _Like the grave_ , Hotch thought, and shivered. The lock on the door hummed and beeped as it registered Emily’s tags, Dave standing too close behind him. The door clicked open.

Together they stepped into an apartment frozen in time. Dust had settled thickly everywhere. The carpet under his feet felt stiff. The whole place smelled of stale air, faded scent, hot dust. The black-out curtains were pulled tightly closed, the power shut off. Dave strode into the living room and ripped them open as Hotch shut the front door, sending dust motes billowing in the sudden movement to resettle on furniture covered in white sheets. And Hotch stood in the front passage and looked around at what she’d left behind.

Tasteful decorations. Photos in black frames on the wall. He walked closer and examined them. Her mother. Her as a child. Her and a man. College photos. Some of the team together. Degrees framed on one wall, select newspaper clippings arranged artfully around it. On the small end table under the photos, there were more. A small dish held keys and loose change and hairpins. The photos around it were more recent, in dinky frames and battered at the edges as though they were more often handled than those above. Jack’s school photo. A picture of Hotch and Jack eating ice cream cones. The team, but not at work. Sitting together in a park, celebrating Jack’s third birthday.

Reid. A photo of Reid, curled on the couch with his eyes half open and an elephant drawn on his cheek. Laughing. Barely visible around him, the scattered remains of popcorn, soda. A movie night. It wasn’t a flattering photo or a professional one, the man’s feet bare and his torso twisted so that his loose shirt was rucked up to reveal the line of his hip. But that just served to make it twice as personal.

The tight feeling in Hotch’s chest got tighter.

“Emily wasn’t in the video,” he said. Rossi was gloved, peering through the books on Emily’s shelves. “They could be using her against Reid.”

“Absolutely,” Dave answered immediately, turning to look at him. His fingers trailed on a book. “Gideon is right about one thing—Reid is pathologically lonely. That would impact his behaviour. We just never knew him _not_ lonely, so what do we know of how he responds to pack protocols? If he loved Emily, platonically or otherwise, he’d do anything for her. We flock to familiarity; all social creatures do. What are we looking for here?”

Hotch circled the spot. Her bedroom up the hall. Kitchen. What _were_ they looking for?

Nothing. They were in the wrong place. Right idea, wrong place.

“We need to go to Reid’s,” he said slowly, looking down at the dish with the keys. Reid smiled back up, sleepily. A relaxed, happy look he’d never worn around Hotch. If he ever saw him again, Hotch vowed to apologise for that.

“Do you have spare keys to your home?” he asked Dave, who nodded. He knew the answer, but was working through it in his mind.

“Of course. We know better than anyone that anything can go wrong. I live alone, I absolutely have spare keys. _You_ have one. You thinking…?”

Hotch picked through the keys. There were four. One car key, to Emily’s Subaru parked in his garage to stop it from being towed. One flimsy looking thing that might be to a small padlock. He pocketed the other two. “Let’s go,” he said, casting one long last look over her living room as Dave closed the curtains. He wanted to stay. He wanted to go in her room, curl on the bed, see if he could catch just a hint of her almost-forgotten scent. Maybe he could close his eyes and just _remember_. But he left. The keys were heavy in his pocket, and his breath caught and continued catching as they drove towards the last place in the world he wanted to go. His feelings on Reid were… complex.

Their profiles were extensive, but clinical. Hotch now knew more about Reid than he’d ever wanted to know. They knew about his mother’s illness, he knew that Reid had been hospitalized twice for injuries in college that looked very much like he’d been attacked by a group of larger wolves. They had his bank records, his internet history, his _thesis_. They knew that he’d been on antidepressants in his late teens, the scarce notes they could find on _why_ placing the blame firmly on his brother’s flight from the state and Reid’s resultant defection from pack life.

They knew about Ethan Reid.

But it was an outside view. Like any other victim. And he wasn’t fooling himself that going into the man’s house, his most private sanctum, would offer the same detached image of a hyper-smart and dedicated, but ultimately secluded, wolf.

And then they were there. They stepped inside in an edgy silence, both their shoulders stiff and every sense alive with the biting tension of stepping into an unfamiliar wolf’s territory. Just like Emily’s, it was dusty. Just like Emily’s, his scent was faded to barely a whisper.

Unlike Emily’s, no one had taken the time to clean out his fridge or his cupboards, or cover his furniture against the dust. No one had tidied away the signs of his life ready for him to come home. His apartment was exactly like it had been the day he’d stepped out, right down to the long-dried mug resting upside down on the sink. Hotch wrinkled his nose at a rotting scent leaking out from the seals of the tightly closed fridge.

There were no photos on the wall. There was art, bookshelves, piles and piles of folders and notes and thoughts scribbled on every snippet. There were books, everywhere. A small pile of VCR tapes piled by the tiny TV set. A couch with blankets folded untidily on the end. A basket with a shirt thrown over the top. Hotch could just see a small kit leaning against it, containing needles and threads and an array of spare buttons. Perversely, he had the desire to crouch down and finish mending what Reid had left behind. Something for him to return to.

In silence, they separated and began digging into the life of the man named Spencer Reid.

It was Hotch who found the letters. In the bottom drawer of the desk, neatly stacked and labelled. From his mother. Some written to her, never sent. He read them carefully. They presented a picture of a man devoted to his mother, excited about his job. They talked about…

The team. Not just the humans. They talked about the _wolves._

_Henry is growing up so fast. You always did say that we weren’t children for long enough and I never quite understood that—being a child, to me, felt like it lasted far too long. But every time I see him, he’s so much bigger, so much smarter. He looks just like Jennifer, with a little of Will thrown in. I wish you could meet him._

“How often would Reid have seen Henry?” Hotch asked softly.

“Hmm. Not often. Once a year, perhaps? JJ wasn’t completely sold on having him around outside wolves, not with what we see at work…”

He wrote to his mother of a boy he barely saw, and every word glowed with pride. These were the letters he hadn’t been able to bear sending. They were raw. Sentences ended abruptly, as though the writer couldn’t continue.

_Sometimes, I realize my views on packs are fatally skewed. I see them run together and I ache. Sometimes, I run alone and imagine that I’m only a little behind, that if I run a little quicker I’ll_

_Emily assures me that I have a place in her pack. If only I could believe that was true._

_You should see Aaron lead, Mom. He does it so naturally. It’s nothing like the Sandstone wolves. They led via regulation, dictating every moment of our lives. Who we were to mate with, when we were to mate. Aaron leads as though he trusts his wolves, absolutely, and I don’t know how to respond to that trust. I feel like a pup tripping over my own paws again and again and again_

_If I can earn my way with the humans, I can prove that I can contribute to their pack. I may not have a mate, have pups, but I can_

_I just need to prove myself_

_My worth to them_

_My value_

“Gideon was right,” Hotch said suddenly, lifting his head and aware, now, of an ache in his neck. Dave didn’t answer, just looked over to him from where he was once again thumbing through books. “He _did_ learn something from his home pack. But not their scripture. Just their hate.”

Dave slipped closer, the book he was reading lax in his hand. He skimmed the select lines Hotch pointed to, his mouth thinning. “You don’t have to _pay_ your way into a family,” Dave said finally, his voice tight. “We… how could he think we were judging his worth? On what he could offer us? That’s _not_ how we work, _Christ_.”

But it explained so much. His painfully subservient behaviour. The way he’d cringe away from direct attention, unless it was complimentary, in which case he’d veer wildly between basking in it and intensely ashamed of it. As though he hadn’t earned a kind word.

“I think,” Hotch said quietly, because they _were_ the seniors of their small, broken little pack, “that we fucked up, Dave. We should have realized his withdrawal was incited. A young wolf, new to the pack… it’s our job to ensure their pasts aren’t nipping at their heels.”

He looked back down at the letters, mouth twisting. Guilt choking him.

_“Aaron_ ,” Dave snapped sharply, stepping to the wall. Here, Reid displayed his doctorates. One of the few truly outward displays of personal pride within the cramped home. “His name.”

“Mm?” Aaron stood and looked, his mind still on the letters. And then he blinked. And looked again.

_Spencer W. Reid._

“That’s not…” It hit. So fucking _obvious_. His middle name wasn’t James.

So why had he said it was?

Dave was already calling, his cell to his ear and his eyes wild. “Garcia, yes, are you with the others? Spencer’s middle name. What’s his middle name?” The cell clicked onto speaker, just in time to hear her say _uh, file says William_ , and they looked at each other.

“What’s his brother’s?” Hotch asked. Neither of them were surprised by the expected _James._

“Holy shit,” they heard Morgan say. “What the fuck, how the _fuck_ did we miss that?”

“He’s with his brother,” Hotch said, talking over Morgan and turning in a circle. That was a _hint_. There had to be more. “Morgan, read out to me what he says. Word for word, _now_.”

_“Our defection was consensual,_ ” Morgan read, and Hotch shook his head. They knew that wasn’t true. They had fur, blood. Emily and Reid weren’t dating, their friendship was entirely platonic—if Reid had deeper feelings, they weren’t explicit in his letters despite him baring every other facet of his soul within them.

_“We left by choice, covering our trail so no one would stop us from finding our goal in life. We have no interest in returning to a society who bond selfishly and hatefully solely in order to bring joy to themselves.”_ That, Hotch could see an argument for. Reid talked of bonding as though it was a duty to a pack—but that could also be a part of his belief that he would never be able to offer anyone else enough for them to take him as he was.

_“Dad, believe us when we say that we are happy.”_

“Stop,” Dave snapped. “Dad—why _Dad_? He doesn’t like his father. All of his letters are to his mother. His father himself stated that he hadn’t had contact with Reid since he left for college, until the day they went missing. If he wanted to send a message to his family, he’d send it to Diana—not to William.”

Morgan started again, slowly. “ _We never meant to hurt anyone by our defection but we’ve made a home here, dedicated to serving our pack and our family. Please don’t tell Aaron where we are. He only serves his own interests and places his own desires before those of his pack.”_

“Not true,” Dave murmured. “Not true, and he doesn’t believe it is either.” Hotch looked down at the letters, at the ‘ _he leads so naturally’_ , and pushed down a burning rush of hope.

_“His leadership drove us away from those we love, his lack of respect for our wishes ensuring that we cannot return. If he sees this—as we know he will, for his jealousy is boundless—we want him to know this: We will not be torn apart. We will stand strong. And we will welcome our family into a world that will teach them what it truly means to be a wolf.”_

“We. Our. Those are concerning choices of language,” Gideon remarked, voice distant. “Cultish. And the last line— ‘we welcome our family’—what family? They’re not pair bonded.”

The hope choked.

“Oh my god,” said JJ, and he knew he wasn’t the only one thinking it.

“ _My name is Spencer James Reid, pair bonded to Emily Elizabeth Prentiss.”_ A lie.

_“We are not missing.”_ Another lie.

_“We are not in danger.”_ Hotch saw Dave wince with the realization: if the previous two statements were lies, so was this one.

_“We left because we didn’t feel safe, so we could be together, and so we could dedicate our lives to our true pack with our unification.”_ Cult language. Cult language based around devotion to pair bonding, but without joy, for the good of the pack. There was one outcome of that kind of doctrine.

_“We are sending this to my previous family to reassure them that we are okay. Please leave us alone.”_

They were being forcefully pair bonded.

“They’re breeding the wolves,” Gideon said, closer now and his voice rough. “They’re _breeding_ them, Aaron.”

“Wait,” Blake called. Hotch waited. There wasn’t much else he could do; every part of him was trying to rebel at this knowledge. “Wait… this. It’s worded so repetitively, but he’s not talking like it’s recited from memory. Or… he _is_ , but not… the wording is strange. And his inflection lifts oddly in certain parts, here…” She played them, Reid’s voice crackling through the phone:

_goal in life_

_selfishly and hatefully_

_joy to themselves_

_dedicated to serving_

“It’s a Tolstoy quote,” JJ cut in suddenly. “Butchered to fit the theme, but it _is_ a quote.”

Silence. “ _JJ_ ,” said Garcia, sounding impressed. “You little scholastic thing, you’ve been holding out on us.”

“She googled while Blake was playing it,” Morgan said. “How is Tolstoy gonna help us?”

But Dave was already moving. Hotch glanced at him, and the stepped forward as his gloved hands slid a dusty book out from the shelf— _The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy_ —and let it fall open.

Paper hit the floor. Folded and yellowed, years old.

Hotch unfolded it with shaking hands.

_Spencer,_

_I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re my brother. You’ll always be my brother, and I know this is going to hurt you, but I can’t do this anymore._

_What they teach us is WRONG. They’re WRONG. You were so strong when we were kids. You always said that we shouldn’t listen, that what they taught was illogical. But then you started listening to them and you got so distant and hurt. Why? I couldn’t stop them. I tried. I thought I’d always protect you, and I failed._

_I look at you now and you’ve got so much potential, but you let Dad get into your head. And I look at you now and I look at myself and I know I’m not as strong as you. I never was. And maybe when they start up on saying we’re wrong, that we don’t think right, that we’re just going to go mad like our mother… maybe they’re confusing us. Maybe they’re looking at me, just me, like they always have. Ignoring you. And that’s why they get you so wrong._

_Because you’re not nothing. You’re not weak. And you’re going to go further than any of us if you don’t let us hold you back._

_I’m leaving. So long as I’m here, you’ll keep coming back and every time you do, they’re going to cement their fucked up lessons a little bit further. So I’m going North—as far North as it’s possible to go. Maybe I’ll see polar bears, build an igloo. Like we used to play when we were kids. Remember how excited you used to get at the idea of polar bears? Don’t follow me. You’re shit in the cold._

_Remember when you were scared and you’d come get me? Didn’t matter what it was. You’d come to me and I’d tell you ‘this is fine’ and you always believed me. I never steered you wrong, Spence. Not once. **This is fine.** I promise you._

_Don’t look for me. Join a pack. Fall in love._

_Live._

_I love you._

_Always your brother, Ethan._

“He’s with his brother,” Hotch told them, lowering the letter. Dave was staring at it, his breathing rasping and two points of colour high on his cheeks. “They’re in Efisga.”

Silence again.

“That’s going to be a problem then,” Dave said, his voice low and dangerous. “When we walk in there to get them out.” His eyes flickered up to Hotch, determinedly cold. “Because we _are_ going to get them.”

“Absolutely,” Gideon said sharply. “One question. We’ve two options here to get them back, the laws are _explicit_ in stating that we cannot cross that border.” They waited. He didn’t disappoint. “So, do we break those laws, or change them?”

 

* * *

 

_Click click click_ went Strauss’s nails on the polished wood of her desk, and Hotch stared at a point just past her shoulder and wondered why she hated him so much.

It was a question he could, really, answer quite quickly.

“You were told the investigation was over,” she said.

He shifted his focus back to her face, staring her steadily in the eyes. “You knew we wouldn’t follow that.” Staying calm. Staying cool. The blinds were drawn, a clock ticking loudly. “They’re our people.”

“They left by choice.”

“And you know that’s bull.” He winced. _Too much, Aaron._ “Ma’am.”

He’d been hanging out with Dave for too long.

Strauss’s mouth thinned, her fingers stalling their relentless tapping. He waited for it. The punishment, the belittlement. The scolding eyes as she informed him that _wolves go rogue, deal with it,_ but with prettier words and a sharper tongue. He seethed, but not a flicker of this showed on his face. “No matter my personal feelings on the matter,” she said slowly, and he tensed, “the Director was firm. Their disappearance was not to be investigated. Rumours of this ‘Ghost’ were to remain just that. _Rumours_. This is a political job, Aaron. And this case is veering into the kind of politics that he doesn’t want on our doorstep.”

That was as close to disparaging the Director as she’d ever come in his presence. Hotch studied her. And he realized; she was on their side. Maybe they’d keep their jobs after this after all. At least, maybe his team would. Gideon, perhaps.

“Am I here so you can tell me not to step on Efisga’s toes?” he asked.

“Yes.” She rubbed her eyes, leaning back in the chair and looking exhausted. “This case has been… Aaron, I have many regrets. _Many_. The disappearance of Agents Reid and Prentiss is one of my greatest. I honestly feel, and this does not leave this office, that we’ve failed them. Failed them absolutely. But, we would be failing _every therian_ in this country if we incite war between us and our Northern neighbour for the sake of two people.”

“Two of our people,” Hotch retorted. “ _Our_ people, _Americans._ Before anything, before they are agents or wolves, they are _Americans_. You don’t think that we have a firm enough moral ground here to make a stand? To stand up and say ‘no’, we won’t allow you to harm us?” He was veering dangerously close to insubordination, his head thumping with anger and his tongue twisting around the barely remembered shape of Emily’s mouth. Like, if only he could draw a picture of the woman he’d loved and the man he’d abandoned, he could make this _real_ to Strauss instead of just potential political chaos. “Not just two people, Erin, hundreds! They’ve taken hundreds of us!” He was standing now, his hands balled on the desk and his chest rising and falling quickly.

“You’re proposing war,” she reminded him, eyes wide, and he wondered if the wolf was showing.

Let it show.

“I’m proposing solidarity,” he corrected her. “We protect our own. I remember that, even if you don’t.”

“I’m on your side, Aaron,” she snapped, and now she rose.

“Prove it.” He stepped back, towards the door, and the moment teetered. “You found out about the press conference—”

“ _Unauthorised_ press conference, you can’t just make a statement without the backing of the Bureau!”

“—and I’m here because you wanted to stop me from running it.”

She took a long breath, shaking her head with her gaze shuttered. “Cowboys,” she snapped. “The lot of you—Gideon’s team too—”

“We’re the same team,” Hotch corrected her gently. “One unit.”

“—absolute cowboys! Yes, I called you here to stop you, this is career _suicide,_ Aaron! If you get up, _live_ , in front of those cameras and state that Agents Prentiss and Reid were abducted by foreign agents, you _will_ incite panic. There _will_ be a backlash. You _will_ lose your job, possibly face criminal charges—”

“All correct,” Hotch said, and smiled. A calm enough smile that it made her falter, eyes narrowing. A sad enough smile that her shoulders slumped as though she’d already registered that he’d made up his mind. He had to assume, since the phone was silent, that Garcia was doing her part as well. If she lost her job over this, it would be another regret he’d carry. “But you just stated that we’re all cowboys. All of us, my entire team… so what makes you think that calling me here, alone, would have stopped it?”

Strauss stared at him. Slowly turning, she reached into her desk drawer and removed a remote, turning on the small plasma on the wall. _Breaking_ said the ticker. _FBI speaks out against abductions._

Strauss swore.

_Sorry, JJ,_ Hotch thought, closing his eyes, but when he opened them, it wasn’t JJ taking his place in the firing line. Gideon and Dave stood there, flashes bursting around their faces and their expressions grim. Behind them, the team ranged, but it was the senior agents the cameras were focused on. And it was Dave taking the fall, once more, for Hotch’s mistakes.

_“My name is SSA David Rossi, acting Unit Chief of the Behavioural Analysis Unit at Quantico. This statement is unauthorised. I do not have the backing of the Bureau or the US Government, and I will likely lose my job and all I have worked for today in the making of this statement._

_Two months ago, information was released that was false. That information stated that the missing agents, Emily Prentiss and Dr. Spencer Reid, left US soil of their own volition. That they ran away together, that their removal from this country was consensual and desired. This information is incorrect. In actuality, they were abducted by persons unknown and taken across the Northern border into Efisga. They are not safe. It was not consensual. And they are not alone. Dozens, possibly hundreds, have been taken with them. Sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, friends. Americans. All of them, Americans._

_Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid are members of my pack. They are citizens of this country. They are heroes. They have impacted lives. Saved lives. Many will never know the true extent of their work and their dedication to keeping this country and its citizens safe. And that is why I’m risking everything to make this statement, because they—and every other American taken by this ‘Ghost’—deserve everyone to know what has happened to them. I stand here and I state that they are heroes, that they are missing, and that they need our help. I vow that I will find them. I will bring them home. And I will prosecute those that took them from us to the fullest extent of our laws._

_Emily, Spencer, wherever you are. The both of you, if you are watching this: You are not alone. You are not forgotten. We are coming for you. We are coming for everyone who was taken. Your country will not abandon you. Your family will not abandon you._

_We are coming.”_

“You realize what this means,” Strauss said in the roar of the press responding to that statement. She muted the set and turned to him, her scent reeking of stress. “Don’t you?”

He did. He nodded. “War.”


	16. Breaking Blind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Five: Chapter Sixteen to Nineteen**

White. The world around her was white and wind and the muffled gulp of a choking motor to the front. She hunkered down and closed her eyes and just… existed. It honestly felt like that was all she could do.

She could barely see Spencer. If she strained against the straps pinning her down, she could _just_ make out the blur of his back. The wind kept lifting, rising, screaming into a squall, and then dropping back down. When it lessened, he’d readjust their course, trying to keep the black shape of the coast on their left. To her view, he was a hulking stranger in his thick safety gear, dusted with snow and rigidly hunched.

_You’re veering right again_ , she called out once, barking to try and attract his attention, but he couldn’t hear her. _Spence. Straighten up!_

He did, eventually, but the frustration of being out of that _room_ but still mute had her bristling under the wind-proof blanket they’d folded around her. The puppies were silent, their muffled minds sleepy as they dozed or meditated or whatever it was they did to amuse themselves in utero. The motor chugged in front of her nose, the bands of the goggles digging in tight under her ears, feeling uncomfortably warm under the blanket despite the arctic winds ripping against them and sending the runners of the ski-do twisting to the right. And the blizzard wore on.

She might have napped. She didn’t think she did, not with the adrenaline of being _free_ still thrumming through her veins, and certainly not with the awareness that, at some point, she was going to have to rip shit out of the man who’d just scooped her from _the room_. Mostly for the fact that he’d left her in there at all. Anger hummed along with excitement along with boredom along with the tension of wondering if they were being chased already. It was a chaotic muddle of emotions that left her reeling and tetchy and desperate to run.

The motor persisted. Skipped a bit. She tensed and looked up, seeing the helmeted head in front of her bob nervously as his gloved hand slipped on the throttle. The instrument panel threw a sickly gleam of blue up onto the helmet, reflecting a dark shape in the sheen of the windshield. Emily shifted awkwardly, determined to look, right as Spencer moved a hand to wipe snow from the compass he had tied there and the ground fell out from under them.

It was a heady feeling. They flew for a moment, the motor whistling, until gravity yanked them down and send them slamming a half-foot down onto the snow beneath. Barely a drop. An amateur rider would have ridden it out easily.

Spencer was possibly an amateur rider, if he’d been practising in the months they were apart, but apparently he hadn’t covered ‘shock of sudden fall’ in whatever lessons he’d taken. He slipped forward, released the throttle in surprise and barely pulled them back on course as the stretcher she was on spun out and dragged them sidelong. They snaked across a flat, snowy surface, tipping sideways, sideways, sideways, and she braced and put her nose to the safety release as the machine slanted to the right.

And stopped as they both leaned back left reflectively, thumping back to the ground. Spencer dropped his hands as it slid to a halt, engine throbbing and choking and whining, finally cutting out. Silence fell, broken by the whistle of the wind as it lulled around them and the rasp of her foggy breath.

“Fuck,” she heard muffled from his helmet, and barked a laugh.

_He told you you’d tip it,_ she teased, hiding her shaking by burrowing back down and digging her nose under her booted paws. _Good work proving him wrong._

But the motor kicked and sent her ears snapping back, so she didn’t hear if he continued cussing.

It chugged. Stalled. Cut out.

Chugged. Stalled.

Cut out again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he said again, and turned to look back at her.

_Fuel?_ she suggested, wiggling up upright. He couldn’t hear her, but she jabbed her nose at the lit gauges. There _was_ power to it. _Are we out of gas?_

He tried again. Nothing. Once more. Huffed angrily and tugged the helmet from his head, propping it on the hood in front. Snow began to flurry down again, thick and heavy and piling fast around them. Something groaned as he leaned down to peer at the undercarriage. Something low and hungry. She flicked her ears, focusing on that noise as Spencer grumbled, fiddling with his gloves and stepping from the machine. Whatever it was, he couldn’t hear—

It cracked.

He heard that.

Boots sinking in the snow, he froze and looked at her. It took a split second. She was already lunging for the snap release before he vanished with a hoarse shout, plunging through the ice they hadn’t realized they were balanced on. _Crack_ went the ice, sagging where his ill-distributed weight had dropped him through, tipping the machine in after him. She leapt free, bounding over the yawning gap as he surfaced, gasping, and the snowmobile toppled on top of him.

Down he went again, without even having time to shout, the ground rippling under her scrabbling paws. She tumbled, hitting the ice on her flank and scrabbling upright. The booties she was wearing—as ridiculous as they were—gripped the slink surface, surging her towards the swelling water.

He appeared again, silent now and pale, and she lunged. Teeth bit deep through multiple layers of sodden winter-wear as she dragged at him, the ice under her paws groaning at the sudden awkward pressure. He was almost on his feet, the water shallow enough that she could tell he was using the snowmobile to stand, but useless to her as shock dazed him. Barely breathing, he stared blankly at her with one gloved hand resting on the edge of the ice.

_Move your ass, asshole!_ she snarled as the snowmobile was tugged out from under his feet by the current and he dropped heavily into her grip. The thick clothes that had kept him alive were now working against them as ice snapped under her paws. _Flat! Flat so I can haul you out, come on! You gotta help me here!_

Despite him being deaf to her pleading, he jolted to life in her jaws. Fumbling, shuddering, he worked the gloves free from his hands and tore at the zip on his snow suit. She braced her paws, holding him rigid as he wiggled out of the sodden material and heaved himself up onto the ice. It cracked, dropping him back in and almost dragging her in after.

“Again,” he stammered, lips purple, scratching at the ice with fingers that were going from white to blue as she watched. She shifted her grip, letting go and snapping back harder with one less layer to bite through. Teeth caught, sinking deep enough that she knew he’d bear bruises in the shape of her jaws. And once more; hauling him up as he flattened himself onto the ice and the snow, dragging him out of the river with a gush of water from his sodden clothes. Running and skidding backwards, she kept going until she felt solid ground under her paws and let go with a _whompf_ of all her air releasing at once.

He went limp on the ground, breath rasping. Eyes shuttering. She took a single moment to curse at him viciously in her mind before snapping at his clothes. Ripping, teeth making short work of the outer layers, she shook him in her grip like he was a rabbit she’d captured for dinner instead of her erratically ridiculous best friend.

“Em,” he wheezed through swollen lips, blinking dully at her.

_Strip!_ she coaxed desperately as he lifted a blue-nailed hand to press against her cheek. _Shift! You’re dying, idiot!_

Somehow, he seemed to register what she was doing, his useless hands slapping against buckles and buttons. Colour draining from his fingers, there was a tell-tale clumsiness working through the limbs that suggested frostbite was the absolute next step, and it wasn’t far off.

Coat off, it tumbled free. She tore his sweater down the middle with a twist of her jaws. Undershirt, thermals, pants, boots; all hit the snow and he shifted until there was a shivering, shell-shocked wolf with wide-glassy eyes standing in front of her.

_Cold?_ he said, making it somehow sound like a question. _Oh…_

_Oh,_ she agreed with a shake of her ruff and shoved against him, tongue working on the chunks of fur around his eyes and nose that were already beginning to ice over. _Come on, Spence, keep talking to me. I need to know if your brain is frosty in there._

_We lost the supplies,_ he said blankly, staring at the river as she licked the worst of the frost off his fur as quickly as she could. _The snow mobile. Clothes, food, uh. Everything. Everything…_ Even his mental voice sounded slurred, sideways, slowing as he stopped trembling and began to fold inwards on himself into the snow. She shouldered him upright with a growl, nipping at his throat.

_Fuck the supplies,_ she snarled, because they couldn’t focus on it right now. She wasn’t going into the river to pull it out, and neither was he. _What do we need to do for you right now? Tell me! **Spencer!** _ She bit him as she shrieked the last word, shaking him out of the stupor he seemed determined to sink into. And, goddamnit, she couldn’t be mad with him when he was like this, just scared-angry. She had a sneaking suspicion he’d thrown himself into the river just to make sure she couldn’t yell at him.

_Warmth,_ he said absently, struggling upright and leaning against her for support and body heat. _Uh. I don’t know. Shelter. Not viable._

_Reid._ She made sure her voice was Hotch-sharp, and he looked at her. _Come on. I need your brain. Tell me the processes to save your life here._

_Thermogenesis,_ he replied pertly, ears lifting up and snapping back down against his narrow skull, nostrils flaring red under a thin layer of hoarfrost. _The act of creating heat within the body. Adult humans don’t have any significant non-shivering acts of thermogenesis, but body temperature can be maintained by clothing, shelter, and exercise. If we… we can move. I can move. Exercise is supremely effective at increasing heat production._

Running.

Running they could do.

_Move,_ she told him, and nipped at his side. He took a few staggering steps. _Move, Reid! That’s an order!_

He moved. They ran. His gait was slow, shambling, and his body ill-suited to pushing through the thick drifts of snow around them. They skirted the river until they found a section that was narrow and thickly iced, crossing it warily and then sticking close to the salt-sprayed shore of the dark sea. The blizzard was building again, white chunks of loose sea ice tossed about in their narrowed view, and Spencer faltered again.

_Keep talking to me,_ she told him firmly, pushing in front and nosing at the thick snow. His tongue lolled, his eyes icing over again, and if she’d had hands she would have shifted the goggles to him. Sharp rocks under the snow bit at his paws, spots of red on the white as he moved. She’d have given him the boots as well. Anything to help him stay with her. _Come on, Reid. I’m not going to give up on you._

_Exercise will increase heat production; however, fatigue will delete body glycogen stores,_ he sent briskly. She took point, shoving through the snow with her broad shoulders to make a path he could pad after at a slow wolf-y trot. The snow made the collar around her neck icy, searing the raw skin underneath where the fur had rubbed away. _Resulting in a decreased capacity for further exercise and also impairing hypothalamic responses to cold. Slim individuals will lose heat more rapidly than those insulated by subcutaneous—_

_Less depressing topic, please,_ she snapped as the snow began to flurry again, the wind ripping against their sides. Spencer staggered with the force of the blast, tumbling into the snow and vanishing with a yelp into a drift. Patiently, she dug him out. Hazel eyes blinked at her from behind snowy lashes, his muzzle white and shoulders stiffly furred as he staggered up and kept following.

_The world’s first webcam was invented to watch a coffee machine in the computer laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England,_ he recited, voice distant and growing more distant by the second. She narrowed her eyes against the snow on her googles and surged forwards faster, desperate for anything ahead to break the white. They needed out of the snow. _To save people from making a trip to the room and finding the machine empty… they called it the Trojan… coffee…_

He faltered again.

She turned, heart skipping a beat when she couldn’t see him. For a second, panic bit down. _Spencer!_ she screamed, racing back along the quickly vanishing trail and almost sprawling over his huddled form.

_Cold,_ he whined, eyes shut. She licked at them, desperate to try and clear the ice. _S’cold…_

_Hold my tail,_ she ordered him, turning and smacking the tufty appendage against his cheek. He winced, opening one eye to look at her before closing it again. _Ears flat to your head, eyes shut. Bite down and hold on._ He did so, silently, and she dragged him along the shore. When he fell, she kept going, dragging him relentlessly. Snow that made its way into her mouth was sharp, salty, and making her mouth feel dry and watery all at once. Horribly, she was thirsty, but snapping up mouthfuls of snow just made her feel thirstier.

_Keep talking,_ she told him, because this world was closing in on them. Snow and dark and wind and ice, and they were the last two creatures alive in the world. If it wasn’t for the barely visible shadow of the ocean to their left and the bite of shore-tossed rocks against her booted paws, they could be walking in circles with no way to navigate. _I’m fucking pissed with you, Spencer. Don’t clam up now. You’re such a fuck. **Such** a fuck! Can’t you do anything right?! You get us kidnapped, you crash the snowmobile when we try to escape, you lose the supplies, and now you’re shutting up right when I need you to talk! Aaron wouldn’t be this useless—Aaron would have us out of here already!_

It was a desperate attempt to spur him, but she knew nothing she was saying rang true. She didn’t believe any of it, and he could sense that even with his fracturing focus.

_I hate you,_ she spat, and thought of the room. _I hate you! You and your… fucking… **freedom**_.

He winced, sensing a surge of bitterness in her voice. On her tail, his grip shifted as he shook himself a little and stopped being quite as much of a dead weight. Steadily, she strode onwards into the night, continuing her rant and building steam.

_You left me in that fucking **room**. Do you know what it was like in there? Alone and just… they were fucking with my head, Spence, making me feel like I was crazy. And you know what? I **was** crazy. You left me to go crazy. You left me in that prison hellhole to be poked and gas-lighted by those fucks and I went crazy, is that what you wanted? Because, what? I’m a woman, or because you and your cock knocked me up and made me less of an agent? Why’d you do it? Do you **like** knowing I went crazy in there, that I pleaded for you to come back, that I screamed for Aaron or JJ or Dave or my mom or that I hallucinated a little just to—_

_I’m sorry._

It was a whisper. A faded whine of a noise as he cocked his head up into the wind and stared at her without opening his eyes. She glanced back at him and then surged forward, dragging him along like a demented kite attached to her tail. _Save it,_ she spat viciously. _This isn’t going to go away because you feel a little bad about it, Reid._

_They would have made us continue a sexual relationship,_ he sent bluntly. She stalled her rant, her paws skipping a beat in their steady onward trot. He continued, his own voice strengthening as he worked himself up against the anger she was aiming at him. _If you had submitted to their indoctrination, even falsely and I **know** you could have—you’re a better agent than I ever was, especially undercover—part of that would have been a continuing sexual relationship between us. Pair bonding is integral to them._

_I don’t give a shit,_ she snarled in reply. _Spence, seriously—I wouldn’t have cared! What the hell is sex compared to being isolated and driven—_

_I care,_ he replied softly, and she gasped at the incendiary self-hatred in his tone. _I care. There was no possible way you could consent to that. I raped you once—if we’re being lenient and counting the entire period we coupled as a singular time—and that would have been a continuation of my sexual abuse of you. I would have rather died myself than allowed that to happen._

Silence. Well, not silence. The wind still screamed along with the bitter disgust bubbling in his brain, the waves still hammered the rocky shore. But in themselves, they were mute, until: _We were both assaulted, Spence,_ she said finally, closing her eyes and shaking dusts of snow from her shoulders. Ahead, the white broke for a moment. A flicker of something in the dark. Warily, she adjusted their course towards it, without daring to hope. _You were no more the assailant than I was._

_I took pleasure from it._

This time she stopped. Froze, in that broken night, and felt something cold work its way inside her even as her coat steamed from the exertion of pushing through the snow. Behind her, he was hunched and small and almost white with half-melted snow threaded through his thin fur.

_You don’t mean that,_ she replied, trying to work her muddled brain into gear. She was wound tight enough to him that his lethargic submission to the cold was beginning to drag her down as well, wrapping her thoughts in a tight layer of suggestion that told her to _lie down, sleep, rest…_

_I do. I’m a pathological people pleaser. I’m perpetually isolated. Beyond all else, I am merely human, except when I’m lupine. I crave social acceptance, the reduction of cognitive dissonance. My instinctual reactions to certain stimuli are enhanced, and no more so than when my social context is encouraging the absolute acceptance of my instincts. Despite my rational understanding that what we did was damaging and wrong, my canid brain takes extreme pleasure from seeing you carrying my offspring… from feeling the sway our pair bond has upon your actions. And, perversely, the knowledge that you and Aaron were together only increases that pleasure—as far as my mammalian brain is concerned, **I** proved myself the better mate by claiming a stronger wolf’s female. See how revolting I am?_

She looked at him now. There was truth in his voice. Absolute truth. The wolf in him almost _purred_ at the sight of the swell of pups in her sides, and when she probed deeper, he let her. Opened himself to her. There was hunger there, raw and primitive. _Claimed_ , it hissed as she touched it. _Mine_.

_You’re an idiot,_ she said finally, smacking him with her tail again. _A fucking idiot. I **know** how you feel. Are you twelve? A damn child? Spencer, I feel **everything** you do._

He opened his eyes, blinking at her through a thick layer of white. She nipped the ice away once more, ignoring how he flinched back. _Wha’?_ he managed, shaking his coat and shedding a layer of frost. They had to move. She _thwapped_ her tail against him a final time so he’d take hold, and turned to stride towards the possible break in the snow.

_We both have instincts,_ she said numbly, not mad with him anymore, not really. It was maddeningly _Spencer_ ; to assume that this instinctual thinking was reserved purely for him because he wasn’t somehow strong enough to ward it off. _I’m horrified this happened, but I’m also pleased this happened. I’m miserable it was you who suffered through it with me. I’m also delighted that it was you. Such a clever mate, I can’t help but think. How smart and strong our pups will be. I no more blame you for feeling fucked up about this than I blame myself, or I blame Aaron for getting fidgety around unknown wolves or I blame Dave for sniffing after every pretty bit of tail that smiles at him. Do you understand, Spence? We are **both** victims of their actions in taking advantage of our biological processes. And I don’t hate you. I couldn’t hate you. I need you, with me, strong and alive and safe and both of us working through this—together, absolutely._

_Oh,_ was all he replied, squinting at her and then past her. _Oh!_

_Thank you_ , she puffed, relieved that the knuckle-head seemed to understand finally, but he let go of her tail and shoved past. _Hey!_

_No, look!_ he barked. Ahead of them, the snow cut a white swathe through the sky.

No. Not the snow.

Light.

_Light!_ she breathed, and her flagging energy lifted. He jittered in place, a thrill of _hope_ rushing through his thoughts and into hers. _Spencer, light!_

They ran towards it, side by side, and not even the snow slowed them.


	17. Charcoal Coast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The building towered over them. Square and tall and made of sheer blocks of white rock, it was an ugly blot against the dark sky. Emily thought it might just be the most amazing thing she’d seen all day.

_Why is there a lighthouse here?_ Spencer asked, staring up at the wheeling red light above. _And… a solely red light? That’s incorrect. Sector lights are based on the preceding difficulties of the sea surrounds—there’s no outcroppings here, I don’t think, no islands offshore. Sea—_

_Reid, stop,_ she huffed, and padded cautiously to the gated wall. Apparently gated wall. The wrought iron was buckled and eaten by rust, sagging at the bottom where the permafrost savagely ate at it. Peering through into a black and snowy yard, she squinted at the door of the building. Thickly wooded with iron worked through, it was a solid barrier to entry. There were no windows on the lower levels on this side, the windows above covered with warped panels of insulated glass. The building stood silent, unlit. Abandoned?

But above, the red light swung.

_Electrification and other automated improvements has made manned lighthouses obsolete,_ Spencer added, padding up behind her and winding between her legs, crouched absurdly under her with his nose on his paws. Seeking warmth, even as he studied the door with his eyes squinted like he was struggling to see. _It’s likely empty. The compound we were in had electrical access—perhaps this place does too. Despite the relative isolation of Efisga, there are power stations. They just choose to rarely utilize them outside of societal hubs._

_Is that an electrified light?_ Emily asked, peering up. White eddied around the building, masking the top except for the garish red hues. As it moved, it lit the yard in sweeps of pink, casting strange shadows upon them. Emily shivered and inched back, wary of being caught by that watchful eye.

_Can’t tell from down here._ His voice was blunt, hoarse with pain. She grimaced, glancing down at him. Where the ice hadn’t already swollen around his eyes, she could see tearing in the corners. The whites were reddened. If he’d been wearing contacts when he’d shifted, they were likely causing him agony now without the ability to remove them.

_When we get home, you’re getting Lasik,_ she muttered, waiting for a sweep of red to pass and then bounding forward, making for the shadows of the door and wary of any noise around her.

_For a therian? Good luck finding a surgeon who specializes._ He followed, his voice thin. Hunkering into the doorway, she peered back as he leapt up next to her, both of them leaving a long trail in the untouched snow that screamed _intruders_. In the confines of the walled yard, the wind was less, the blizzard quieter, and nothing hid their tracks. He looked too, at the churned snow that was visible even to his eyes. _That’s a problem if we’re being surreptitious._

_A problem for future Prentiss,_ she responded, rearing awkwardly onto her hind legs to nose at the door handle. Her rotund shape made it awkward, dragging her forward heavily against the door with her boots scrabbling at the wood. A noise that was barely noticeable out here, but she scowled to think of how it would echo through silent, stone corridors. _Problem for present Reid, however, is if this fucking door is locked and he freezes his skinny tail off—_ The door clicked open. _Huh._

_Guess security isn’t high on their list of priorities out here,_ Spencer said, shoving her. _Hurry up, go inside. Careful, but quick, but **careful**! _ He was eager, almost wiggling with his desperate need to be _warm_ again, and she stuck her head through the narrow gap of the doorway and peered around. Silence. She pushed inside and Spencer followed, the door swinging shut with a soft _snick_ and cutting the wind off. It felt, for a moment, like all her senses had dulled at once. She snuffed at the air and huffed with irritation as her frozen nose gave no feedback. Just overwhelming salt.

Spencer paced past, low and bristling and leaving a damp trail behind him as ice on his fur melted. She shook out her coat, shedding light dusts of snow from properly insulated fur, and padded quietly after. Letting him take point, his smaller size more inconspicuous.

_Can you smell anything?_ she asked him, trying again as her nose defrosted. He was silent, his eyes shut and ears perked forward.

_Someone lives here,_ he said slowly, inching down a long hall around a tight corner. She followed, scenting something sharp on the air. Smokey. The chill in the air gave way, slightly, as they peered around that tight corner. Double doors stood ahead. Heat radiated from them. Emily leaned closer, eager. _The door… the front door didn’t make a noise when we opened it. The hinges are oiled._ They both looked down at once, to the damp floors under their paws. _No dust._

_Maybe a cleaner?_ she offered. Anything so they could creep ahead towards the warmth that room offered. _Or… we were travelling for at least two hours on the snowmobile, and then hours more on paw it feels. We’re far out of easy pack range, especially with the climate here posing risks to lengthy travel. Maybe this guy isn’t a wolf…_ Because she could smell it now. The acrid bite of sweat. An unwashed body. Barely masked by salt and smoke and a vivid fishy overtone; there was a human here.

_One way to find out_ , Spencer said briskly, and, before she could stop him, he marched forward.

_Spence!_ she hissed, but he was already shoving open the door with his nose and walking inside without a pause. She raced after, low to the ground with her hackles up and senses alert, bursting in with a growl already working out of her mouth.

Lit by a single oil lamp and a deep fire set into a stony hearth, a man studied them. Spencer stood without compunction, his head low and eyes glittering in the light. The man watched back, just as rigid, his hands stilled on the nets he was working over with a thick, gelatinous grease. A long wooden table stood pressed against one wall, the floor bare except for the rug the man was sitting on. Above the fire, fish were smoking. Baking through, the scent of cooking impossible to miss now that they’d charged right into it. Emily felt her mouth start salivating as her stomach lurched and reminded her that she hadn’t eaten today. From next to her, she heard Spencer’s belly grumble.

Ten seconds later, Spencer growled. Long and low and he inched lower to the ground with his tail uncharacteristically high and his muzzle curled. He looked wild. Wild and dangerous with his white fangs stark against his damp-darkened fur.

_What are you doing?_ she asked cautiously. _We’re not going to attack this guy._

_If it means we live, yes, we are,_ he responded immediately, but she felt the twist to his thoughts. The protective _you live_ that he wasn’t saying but was thinking. She was hungry; therefore, he was going to get her food.

Idiot male.

The man grunted, dropping the net and standing to rub his greasy hands on his thick clothes. They both froze, Spencer’s eyes cutting across to the table where a shotgun lay. There was a long moment where she could tell he was calculating how fast he could take the man down. But the man turned to the fire, grabbing the spit and tugging the half-cooked fish loose with burnt tongs. He turned, spoke in a harsh, guttural tongue that she couldn’t quite catch, and tossed it at them.

It hit the stone tiles and broke apart where it was cooked, leaving a greasy line of oil where it skidded. Hot liquid splashed Spencer’s paws and he skittered back and danced in place, before lunging forward to yank it towards them with the wolfiest snarl she’d ever heard from him. A clear _back off_ if she’d ever heard one, he dragged it with no care for his burning mouth. He bumped into her and she scampered back, almost tumbling out the doorway in his haste to move. The door swung shut between them and the keeper, the chill instantly returning.

_Eat,_ Spencer said shortly dropping the fish on the floor in front of her. It was mangled where his teeth had bitten in, still half-raw in places, and she was devouring it before she could even say _you first._ Spencer watched silently, licking grease from his jaws and then his paws and then, painfully for her to see, the stone floor. She swallowed a mouthful that burned all the way down and shoved the remains at him.

_Watch the bones_ , she managed, shaking her head as her body protested the heat of her hasty meal, her stomach churning and throat seared. _They’re pokey._

The door snicked open, casting them in a yellow flickering light. Both froze, but the man did nothing but frown at them and then walk back into the room. Leaving the door open, heat radiating. A clear invitation.

Spencer padded in a nervous circle. The fish lay between them.

Her stomach growled again.

_Eat!_ she hissed, because if he didn’t she _had_ to. She was painfully hungry, the feeling overtaking even the knowledge that it was cold and the possibility of a predator through those doors.

He didn’t. Just continued that nervous winding circle, eyes locked longingly on the open door.

_Thump._

Another fish hit the ground, just inside the door. Not a whole on this time. Barely a mouthful. A following thump sounded, another chunk landing further within.

_He’s coaxing us like nervous kittens,_ Emily said, snorting with amusement, and then couldn’t bear it anymore. She snapped up their original fish, finishing it in three great bites and groaning as her stomach complained that it wanted more/less/ _anything_. The puppies woke up, their strange little brains sounding out as they added their misery to the stress her body was under, three faint echoes of _unsettled._

_Damn_ , Spencer muttered, and inched back into the room. Flat to the ground and his eyes locked on the man. Emily following, refusing to creep. She sauntered in, arching her chest out with a snarl on her lips when the man examined her. And he laughed, a deep chuckle that seemed to surprise him as much as it did them, before pointing to the rug. The rug where he’d piled the rest of the fish on a copper plate. As they watched, he moved to the fire and banged a pot onto the rack within, something sloshing within. Emily twitched her nose, scenting milk heating even as she snapped up the two chunks of fish he’d thrown to persuade them further in. The man spoke again in his unfamiliar language, and pointed. His expression was clear. ‘Close the door’.

Emily did.

_Em…_ Spencer whined, eyes white-ringed with worry.

_He’s feeding us,_ she said bluntly, and ignored the claustrophobic feeling of being shut in a room. That was _not_ something she wanted to encourage.

_The compound fed us…_

_He’s one man and a shotgun. We’re two big scary wolves with sharp bits. I like our odds._ She walked forward fearlessly to the plate of fish and the warm rug, ignoring the food on purpose and flopping to the rug with a groan of appreciation for the warmth sinking into her fur. _Besides, it’s this or the blizzard. Eat your fish. He’s given his meal up for you. Be appreciative._

Spencer whined again, before slinking forward and nervously nipping at the plate, his swollen eyes locked on the man. The man watched silently, occasionally moving past Emily to stir the pot. Eventually, he wrapped his hand in a thick cloth and pulled the pot free, waving the wolves out of the way before tipping the frothy milk into the bowls for them.

This brought him closer to Emily, as she shoved her nose eagerly towards the bowl and almost got scalded for her troubles. She saw him pause, saw his blue eyes skim the collar around her neck and then darken. A rough phrase followed, one that she inferred from the inflection was probably a cuss.

Weirdly, she suddenly missed Dave.

Then he was gone, thumping from the room with his shambling walk and taking the biting scent of unwashed male human with him. Emily stuck her tongue in the milk and spluttered as it burned. Spencer rolled his eyes at her, hunching over his like a fluffy, wet bat. The heat was making his fur steam as it dried into amusingly tufty spikes.

_Oh, shut up,_ she snapped. _When does the blizzard break? We can run for it then, once your bits have stopped being all sad._ Both of them kept glancing nervously to the door the man had exited from, waiting for his return.

_Late tomorrow,_ he responded. _If you want to wait it out, we’re stuck here for a day almost… that’s going to shorten the distance we have on our pursuers._  

_Are you so sure they’re chasing us?_ she asked, tension shivering up her spine and her hackles rising.

_Yes,_ was all he’d reply, the man walking back in with armfuls of what looked like blankets and a stony expression. When he walked back near them and kneeled, showing them what he was holding, Emily twitched with interest. Blankets, yes, but not _only_ blankets.

Clothes. They’d be far too big for Spencer, but they were slid across the stone floor to him as Spencer watched cautiously. A bottle followed—oddly out of place in this weird step back one hundred years atmosphere, it was a mundane bottle of medicated eye-drops. Next to that, topical cream for burns. Emily looked at Spencer, saw him shifting his paws nervously on the tiles, and scowled. His nose was raw and peeling, his inner ears just as sore looking, and now she was sure that his pads weren’t much better.

The man nodded, moving back to his place by the fire. Another fish was procured from a box set into the wall, clearly now his own meal, his mug was filled with the remains of the milk, and he calmly went back to greasing his nets as though he was alone once more.

_Does he want me to shift?_ Spencer asked softly, sniffing at the clothes. Emily, busy lapping up the milk, shrugged. _I think we should leave once we’ve eaten…_

She winced, sensing his anxiety. The man was intent on his job, but his gaze kept lifting to them and back away again, something dark working behind those nondescript eyes. Exhaustion wasn’t far off from her; they’d run for hours through thick snow and the warmth of the room wasn’t exactly helping her stay alert. Sleep would be a need rather than a want within another few hours of travel, in the blistering cold of the blizzard she knew was still raging outside these stone walls, and they had no guarantee of finding further shelter…

_We have no supplies,_ she said reluctantly, well aware that this could be a mistake. _No idea where we’re going except ‘away from here’. The compound wolves won’t be able to send out search parties until the blizzard settles, and we’ve left no tracks so they’ll be spread thin in every direction. And your body is stressed, Spencer. You danced with hypothermia today, we’ve both been running on raw adrenaline, and we’ve gotten further than a wolf can run. We should stay._

But Spencer’s eyes were skipping to a square window set high above their heads, his gaze narrowing. Outside, all she could see was a pressing white, occasional snatches of black night sky, and the fleeting vivid sweep of the blue light.

_Blue?_ he said, right as her brain registered that. _He’s changed the light!_

She stood with a low growl, backing towards the door. Spencer went with her, almost tripping over his paws. The man watched them go and said nothing. Backing up continuously until they reached the front door around the corner from the warm kitchen, Spencer groaned out loud. There was an iron bar across it. They were locked in.

The limping gait sounded as the man made his way up the hall. They both whirled, pressed against the door with their teeth bared at the sight of the shotgun in his hand, but he turned it towards them to show it was unloaded. They paused. Waited as he limped past to a dark stairwell and vanished up it with a coughed word.

_I think he wants us to… follow him?_ Spencer asked, blinking. Emily sighed. This was proving annoying.

_Fucking bullshit lighthouse fucking asshole Efisgans, I hate snow, I hate ice, I hate everything cold,_ she muttered, following the man. _What’s the worst that can happen? Let’s go in there, Emily! Oh, he has a gun, whatever, this is fun. This is fine!_

_This was your idea!_ Spencer retorted, following her up the stairs.

_Stairs,_ she wheezed, finding that apparently her bullshit body wasn’t apparently built for anything _useful_ anymore. _Stairs hurt. Stupid puppies. Stupid stairs. Stupid lighthouses._

The man vanished ahead, into a room that lit up when he walked in. Still grumbling, Emily followed and found him pulling open shutters on one of the thick windows she’d spotted from below. They made eye contact as he smiled grimly, and pointed out with the butt of the gun. As she inched closer, he swept his arm, an invitation.

Spencer made the first move, skirting the man and standing on his hind legs to peer down and out the window, squinting. As he did so, the man fiddled with something, the whirr of a distant motor starting up as he hit a switch and flooding the snowy yard below with generated light.

_Oh my god,_ squeaked Spencer, his ears flicking down and then up and then down again as his tail wagged, betraying his excitement. Emily shot up next to him, staring down at the snow they’d churned up with their tracks. _Polar bear, a real polar bear, that’s a **polar bear** , Emily, a real polar bear oh my god oh my god. _He made a thin peeping noise, an actual _peep_ of excitement, tail wagging harder.

Emily stared at him, and then back down incredulously at the yard where the yellow-white bear was incredibly, shockingly visible sniffing around their tracks. As she watched, it shambled closer, lifting its head to scent the air. She saw a blocky muzzle, a thickset head, and it yawned. Big teeth.

She saw big teeth, and dropped away from the window, heart hammering and mouth dry.

_How long was that following us?_ she managed weakly, and Spencer made the queerest sound she’d ever heard him make.

_Probably for **miles**! _ he exclaimed. _How awesome is that!_

_Super,_ she lied, beginning to shiver imagining that catching them, bursting out of the darkness, Spencer vanishing under crushing paws, those black eyes turning to her… _I don’t feel well._

_Are you okay?_ Spencer’s attention snapped away from the window as he dropped to nose at her worriedly. _Is it the pups? Do they feel wrong? Is there anything I can do?_

_Fine, I’m just…_ She turned to look at the man as he held out the gun, eyebrows popped. _Ah. I think he’s offering to shoot your new buddy if we’re determined to leave._

_No!_ Spencer twisted and shifted with a shout, standing upright in a flail of limbs as he waved his hands in a clear _don’t_ gesture. “Don’t! We’ll stay, we’ll stay! Until the, uh…” He pointed out the window, to the gusting snow. “The blizzard is over. Okay? If… if you don’t mind.” The man just rolled his eyes and walked out, seemingly unconcerned by the frantic, naked man now standing in his study. His passing ruffled the papers pinned to all the walls, endless charcoal drawings of boats, of seals, of bears, some maps. She stared at them until she felt centred again.

_Well,_ Emily said, standing back upright with a groan as her head swum. _If that’s over with, can we go back to the room with the fire? You’re looking chilly there._ He couldn’t hear her, but he definitely saw the glance she shot his junk. With a flush heating his pale cheeks, he covered his crotch and shifted again, glaring. _Don’t worry, Spence. I won’t tell the others._

_It’s cold,_ he protested, following her back down the damned stairs. _Also, you’re so childish. I can’t believe how childish you are. This man could murder us during the night and the last thing you’d ever say to me is an adolescent comment on my genitals._

_I’m just lightening the mood,_ she said wryly. Not mentioning that she was still staving off the raw terror of the huge predator outside. _You should appreciate me more._

He hmphed and said nothing as they made their way back into the fire lit room and he shifted once more. She curled up, exhausted, by the fire with her paws on her nose and watched as he dressed in silence in amusingly overlarge clothes and crept down next to her.

_Use that on your eyes_ , she said sleepily, nudging the bottle. His eyes looked worse as a human, peeling and gross, and he did so with little coaxing, his nose red and slimy with the cream he’d slathered on it. The man was silent, the nets put aside and a book on his lap. A pen scratched across the page of the book. She ignored it, focusing on the heat, the press of Spencer’s thigh alongside her, the fullness of her stomach…

She drifted, her head in a warm lap, a hand stroking gently across her ears. He was humming, the sound rumbling through her, and she wondered what he was thinking. Wondered if he knew where they were going, wondered if he had a plan… wondered if that big brain of his was busy puzzling through their escape…

And she opened her eyes and, for a snap second, stared at the cheerfully painted walls of _the room._

Back in _the room._

She was _back_. The same sunken bed. The same glass door of the bathroom. The walls shrunk in. She opened her mouth to scream.

With a jolt, she jerked awake and stared at the glowing remains of the muted fire, the side that was turned away from the hearth cold. Her head on the rug. Heart hammering and stomach heaving with panic, the pups kicking along as they sensed her fear.

Lighthouse. She was at the lighthouse. Not _the room_ , they’d escaped _the room_.

Spencer was gone.

She stood, slowly, limbs complaining. The lighthouse was eerily silent. Just the occasional pop of a coal in the fireplace sounded to remind her that she was alive, that this moment absolutely did exist. It was almost easy to slip into that silence, to pad mutely to the door and nose her way out, leaving behind the fire and the puddle of blankets she’d been snuggled into. Under her paws, the boots removed while she’d slept, the stone slabs felt bitterly cold. Iciness radiated up into her body as she paced along the narrow hallway, following the trace of a fresh scent. Spence had gone this way, up these halls, past this door, up these…

_Shit_ , she thought, looking at the stairs. Just to narrate her irritation, the pups began a steady drumbeat of discontented paws everywhere they could reach. _Ow, fuck, hey! You kids are getting **so** many chores when we get out of here, I swear._

Up the stairs she went, puffing with every awkward step. She felt enormous, none of the easy grace she’d felt the day before loping through the snow showing anymore. Enormous and shambling and clumsy, her weight throwing her off balance on the slick footing. Up and up and up until…

She heard it. A huff of exhaled air. She slipped quietly over to the door to the study, nosing it open. As well-oiled at its companion downstairs, it made no noise and her entrance went unnoticed by the man curled in the window nook.

_Spence…_ she murmured, but he didn’t seem to register her presence. Just curled tighter, his mouth pressed into the rough fabric of his borrowed pants and his short hair bristly. Weirdly, it was then that she noticed he’d had his haircut. Before they’d escaped likely, cropped short around his ears with only traces of his wild curls remaining. _Hey. Hey, what’s wrong?_

But he breathed unevenly, squeezing out a breath that sounded like it _hurt_ , and began to cry. Or maybe continued crying. She had a horrible feeling that he’d been up here, hurting alone, for hours now while she’d slept downstairs. It wasn’t the nice kind of crying, or muted, or polite. It was wet and choking and sounded like every gasp was ripping something integral out of him, like if she walked over there and demanded that he face her, she’d find a raw, gaping hole in his chest where all the visceral pain he must be feeling would be spilling out.

Because no one cried like that unless they were truly inconsolable.

She must have made a noise, some soft mewl of shared misery, because his head lethargically lifted to stare at her. Eyes red-rimmed, mouth deep-set. He looked haggard, gaunt. Exhausted. Broken.

All he did was wordlessly slip to the floor. _Thunk_ on the stone with enough violence that she winced for his kneecaps. And he held out an arm, a single arm, for her.

There was no turning away from that need. She surged forward and hurtled into the cradle of his arms, letting him drag his fingers almost painfully through her fur as he tightened his grip and pulled her flush to his chest. She gasped with him as he moaned into her fur, burying his face into the thick ruff, all of that hurt spilling into her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you,” he managed thickly, opening a gap between them with his shaking fingers so he could talk without ending up with a mouthful of wiry black. She used that gap to nudge her nose against his cheek, tasting salt. “Just… please. Please. I can’t talk about it. I _can’t_ … he’s my brother…”

Oh.

And she closed her eyes against the memory of Ethan watching them leave.

“He’s my brother,” Spencer managed again, the words choked and wet and cutting through the quiet of the room like a knife. “I left him. And I need to come to terms with that. It’s my burden to bear.” She closed her eyes. Felt his yawning pain through their pair bond: the guilt and the searing desire to go back, to go forward, to do anything but stand still in his betrayal. And he held her tight, his breathing shuddering once, hiccupping, evening out.

_Your burdens are mine,_ she sent finally. The pups kicked. Her heart kicked with them. Reminding her that they’d hurt each other before, they’d hurt each other again, but that didn’t change this moment. _I’ll carry them with you. That’s my choice, and my promise._

But he couldn’t hear her; he didn’t answer.

“Ahem.” The cough was polite. The look the man gave her when she looked at him was anything but. It was simmering and painful and desperately lonely and, for a second, she pressed tighter to Spencer. One more word, in his strangely guttural, singing language, and they broke apart. Spencer stood, his head bowed, and rubbed his sleeve over his red-splotched face.

“Yes?” he said huskily, finally meeting the man’s eyes. Emily curled around his legs like a great, black protector, her head low and expression wary. She didn’t understand, not quite yet; just _why_ this man was helping them? And what was his blue light signalling?

The man said something else, gesturing towards the window where a pink-tipped dawn was revealing an illusionary world, before turning and limping from the room. They followed. What else could they do? Followed him from the study, up a hall with floorboards worn thin from countless feet, pausing at a door that he hesitated with his hand on the handle. Emily eyed him, eyed the claw marks on the bottom of the wood. She’d seem marks like that before. Her own apartment had them. They were the marks of therian paws nudging a door open countless times.

A therian had lived here. If not now, once before.

“Hmm,” grunted the man, and shoved the door open. He strode in with purpose, his expression impossible to read and his shoulders hunched. Almost wolfish.

_He’s wolf-born,_ Emily realized out loud. _Spence, he’s a human born of a wolf… he could have family **there**._

Deaf to her, Spencer walked into the room, his gaze skittering around. He stalled, feet pattering to a stop, his eyes widening. Emily followed. And stopped. And looked. Like the study, this room was covered in charcoal drawings. Unlike the study, they weren’t seals and birds and the surrounds of the lighthouse. They were wolves. The paper patterning the walls around the man as he stood by a wide oaken desk that must have cost a fortune to haul out here was a scale of yellow, from bright white by the door winding around to a few tattered pieces by the bed that were almost nicotine stained with the vividness of their hue. And the wolves, as the room continued, changed too.

Not all were alive. Emily walked and stared at them, even her own puppies silent in wonder. There were wolves running, three side by side. Wolves laying in the kitchen she recognised as the one below her paws. One wolf slinking by the gates outside, his form ill-defined and lips curled back warningly. Wolves nuzzling. Wolves cringing in the corner of the hall, half dressed in winter gear. Wolves running on the horizon. A wolf sprawled half in and out of a river, her belly torn by the ice she’d been thrown against. Eyes open, tongue lolling, expression empty. Another wolf dead with the marks of a bear’s claws.

Some of the wolves wore collars.

She said nothing, just counted. Fourteen all up. Eight were collared.

“Other escapees,” Spencer said suddenly from right behind her. “You… you helped them. Some of them.” His fingers traced the wary wolf by the gate. “Those that would let you.”

Emily kept moving until she found the first. A white wolf on a cliff, the drawing elementary and childish. This one wasn’t alone. A boy stood holding her ruff, his crude fingers wrapped around the collar on her neck. Unlike the others, this was shaded. Behind them, the lighthouse was black. Foreboding. The collar was filled in so harshly the charcoal had torn the paper. The boy’s face was blank.

Below them, what could be seals danced in the waves.

The man made a noise, tapping his palm on the desk. As one, they turned to him. He looked annoyed, tapping it again.

Emily moved first, Spencer’s eyes still switching from the man to the pictures. Under the man’s palm when she stood awkwardly on her hind legs and rested her uneven weight against the desk, was a map. Copied from a satellite map pinned to the wall above the desk and almost rudimentary, at least when compared to what spanned the upper half of the drawing. While below, the map showing the path he was clearly telling them to take was rough and showed just enough that Emily could tell he was instructing them to follow a river south until they hit a range of mountains, what spanned above was tremendously detailed.

It was a wide arch over what would be the ocean if the map was tipped the right way. Below the arch was the map. Along it were simplistic designs she recognised as moons. Above those, was an intricate map of stars and stylized creatures made of sharp lines of charcoal. As she watched, he drew a book towards him. Written in a runic language she didn’t recognise; she _did_ recognise the pictures embedded in the text.

“A star map,” Spencer murmured, glancing at the man for permission before tracing his fingers on the thick paper. “It’s… a calendar. Using the constellations visible to us throughout each season. Look, it begins now. Winter, Orion the Hunter… spring brings the Sickle of Leo. Summer is Scorpius, fall is the Square of Pegasus. And minor arrays in between. There’s a year…a year of time here. You want us to travel for a year?” His brow was furrowed as he scanned the map, fingers dancing over the paper until they landed where the route he’d marked ended, on the sharply defined mountain range.

The man _hmph_ ed crankily, tugging it back and leaning over it. He jabbed at Emily with the charcoal pencil he was holding, clearly gesturing to her swollen sides. Even as Spencer inched protectively closer to her, the man turned back to the map and drew a wolf curled on its side with five smaller shapes suckled next to her across the mountain range.

_I think that’s pretty clear_ , Emily said, her stomach plummeting. She heard rather than saw Spencer swallow. _He’s telling us to stay put until next…_ She examined the starry map, most of the intricate details lost to her. _Until Leo arrives again. Spring. He’s telling us to hide up there until spring. Turn wolf, damnit, I’m talking to my fucking self!_

A soft mind brushed hers, muffled interest. Unwilling to focus on it right now, she shoved it away and ignored it. It occurred to her, in that exact moment, that she wasn’t going to be able to ignore the pups for much longer. Almost in agreement, her belly twinged, the space between her hips aching.

“To stay there for a year…” Spencer murmured, his expression almost green as though he was imagining so much time lost, so much time hiding. Emily thought of Aaron and felt very, very far from home. In her mind, his image was blurred. Dark hair, a soft smile… she could think of individual features, but not the whole. She’d forgotten what colour his eyes were. Dark, she thought for sure, but not the shade. Not the exact shade.

It felt very important that she remember the exact shade.

_Our moms think we’re dead,_ she heard herself saying distantly.

“Hunting might be difficult, but water should be plentiful,” Spencer was continuing.

_Jack will be in school by then. You’re not listening. I’ll have missed him beginning school._

“Travelling with pups during winter would be a death sentence, and they’ll slow us down enough that we won’t be able to leave once they’re walking and still guarantee making it home before winter hits again…”

_We won’t see Henry. JJ. Dave. What if something happens to them while we’re gone? It could. Dave is older. Their jobs are dangerous. Are you even going to ask me?_

“But…” Spencer stopped, and examined her. She wondered how she looked at that moment. Cursed and thanked the wolf features that left her expression blissfully blank instead of baring her breaking heart for all to see. “Labour in the wilderness…”

_I’m not staying here to die. I’d rather the mountains. At least there a polar bear won’t eat what’s left of me._

But he was right. Once they reached the range… they’d have to stay.

Maybe some of that showed in her face, because he crouched and brought one of his hands to her cheek, cupping it gently. A finger traced her muzzle, his eyes examining hers. Hazel and dark and deadly serious. She felt trapped, twisted, pinned by that gaze, by something strange and longing it was almost saying.

“I’ll protect you as well as I’m able,” he said softly, “for as long as I’m able. We’re going home, Em. Together. And I’ll carry you and our pups if I have to. Do you trust me?”

She nodded, even as she replied mutely, _only if you promise not to fall if I do. At least one of us makes it home. At… at least one of us tells the world what they’re doing, okay, Spence?_

“Together,” Spencer breathed, and stood. Downstairs, a bell rung ominously. The man grunted and swept the map up—pausing to tuck something underneath into the folds of the paper—before limping to the door. The bell rang again. And again, masking paws and boots on the slate stairs. Masking those same paws and boots—and the pad of Spencer’s socked toes—into a room beyond the kitchen. A storage room that smelled of leather and oil and grease. She watched blankly, numbly, as the man dragged a box from a shelf and let it thump to the ground between them. He passed the map across to Spencer, pressing it into his hands. Wordlessly, Spencer took it. Unfolded it. Frowned.

She watched something wild and unknowable pass over his features before he folded the map tightly again and held it in trembling fingers, concealing whatever the man had added inside. He didn’t look at her once, and her heart sunk.

_Do I even really know you at all anymore?_ she thought, closing her eyes and looking away. _What if they took you and twisted you, Spencer… how would I even know?_ Because Spencer Reid of the BAU didn’t discount her opinion or hide things from her. Except… he did. Ethan. His mother.

_Crack._ The box snapped open as the man heaved the top off, piling supplies loose. Spencer twitched, before moving forward to help and being waved away. The man pointed to Emily, back to Spencer, back to Emily, until Spencer nodded and slowly began undoing buckles. Ready to shift. Satisfied, the man went back to packing things into what Emily realized were two sets of saddlebags. Made for wolves, no doubt.

“Can you…” Spencer crouched, naked now with the map in one hand and the clothes folded next to him, and brushed his hand along her collar with his eyes on the man. “Can you remove this?” Despite the language barrier, his message was clear. The man shook his head. Emily had expected this, but it still hurt. “Oh.” Spencer leaned forward to slide the map into one of the bags. “Well. Thanks, anyway. I don’t know if you understand that… but, thank you.” He shifted as the man added dried meat in thick strips to one of the bags, his mouth twisting into a haggard smile. On top of that went the clothes Spencer had stripped. There wasn’t much room for anything else. A knife in one, short and covered by a thick leather sheathe. A compass followed that. Something small and dark she didn’t quite catch, but suspected was a fire starter. It wasn’t much.

It might just be enough to save their lives.

_Emily?_ asked Spencer, a wolf now and shivering with anticipation. _I don’t think we can stay here. Even if he’d let us, they’ll pursue us. I know they will—they believe absolutely that children belong to the pack. As far as they’re concerned, we’re kidnappers. And if those wolves up there… if they were escapees and any of them were recaptured, they’ll hunt us here._

_I don’t want to stay here,_ she said truthfully as the man tapped her shoulder. She twitched back, wary, but let him strap the packs around her shoulders, testing them carefully around her stout shape. They sat comfortably, barely weighing her down, and she suspected all the heavy stuff was going onto her partner. His soft huff and sagging hips when the packs were strapped onto him confirmed it. _The map didn’t say how to get to the river._

_Maybe he has a vehicle,_ Spencer suggested, itching at his belly where the straps sat. The man tightened them quickly with a practised twist of his hands and then moved away, fumbling through a chest. _Are you okay? Is that too heavy? Em, if it’s heavy tell me, you’re far enough along that—_

_Don’t be a sexist fuck,_ she snapped. Probably rudely, but she was _done_ with his self-sacrificing attitude. Maybe he sensed her irritation, more likely he felt the whorl of distrust she couldn’t help but feel, but he silenced. The man appeared again, one final time. This time he looked hesitant. Wary. He held out his hands and Spencer blinked when he realized what he was holding. Emily inched closer and snuffed. It was a coat. Adapted to wolves, it would cover him easily without restricting his legs. On top, a thick woollen cowl lay tumbled. It was feminine, well-worn, and would stop the cold from curling back the delicate skin of Spencer’s ears once slipped over his head and neck.

_Let him put it on you_ , she told him tiredly. Her googles and boots would be next, she could see them nearby. She _could_ get them on herself, or more likely, with Spencer’s help since her own body was clumsily useless right now, but it was faster to let the man with hands do it. _It’s still twenty below out there, Spence, and barely winter._

Spencer allowed it. Any other time, she’d have laughed at the sight of her friend being dressed by this bushy-faced man with the thick fingers, buckling straps and slipping the cowl over his head to pin his ears back amusingly. It wasn’t really funny today. Not even the boots that followed, for the both of them. She got a coat too, but it was thin and merely waterproof where Spencer’s was insulated, and loved.

_I think it’s hurting him to part with this_ , Spencer said as proceedings were done and the man stalked to the front door to ready his shotgun. The bell rang again— _clang clang clang_ —incessantly and impatiently. _His hands were shaking. Heart rate accelerated._

Emily thought of the collared wolf with the boy holding her fur. _We’ll bring it back,_ she said finally, and walked to the door on booted paws. Readjusting to the weird feeling it left, although she’d managed to indicate that the googles should be put on Spencer instead of her so at least she had her peripherals. The man looked down at her as he braced open the door. Hand dangling, so she licked it. Quick and sharp and not something she’d done often before, but an obvious sign of _something_. A soft bump of her nose followed. _I promise. We’ll return… with your belongings, and with justice for those who hurt you._

But the man just looked at her strangely, and stepped outside into the snow.

Without any idea of what lay ahead, they blindly followed. 


	18. Seeking Shelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They followed the man to a boat. It floated innocuously in the icy water, fibreglass and small and flat-bottomed. Emily felt sea-sick just looking at it and the way the waves rolled it unrestrictedly about. Inside was empty except for two oars and a spool of mouldy rope, patches of snow heaped in there and half-melting, leaving it slick with ice where it had frozen again.

They both stared at it as the man grunted and pointed, and then they looked at each other.

_Uhh_ , said Spencer. His nose was wrinkled and, if she could see them under the cowl, she’d bet his ears were slunk back as well. Under the end of the coat that covered his rump, she could just see the tip of his tail sneaking down between his legs. _I don’t… boat._

_I’ll puke for sure,_ she replied glumly, taking the initiative. They’d come this far. What was a little puke between two people who were about to experience the joy of birth together? But she didn’t say that because she wasn’t sure Spencer was ready to cope with that quite yet, simply stepping down into the boat. It rocked in the water, threatening to tip her paws out from under her. Whining, she huddled down into the hull, the surface under her paws slick and cold. Small chunks of ice bumped the sides, thunking gently, and the air was thick with salt and brine. Above them on the small dock, Spencer peered down. _Come on,_ she grumbled. _I’m not doing this alone._

_Thump_. Down he came, like a wolf-shaped sack of potatoes, his hind legs skittering out from under him and his ass smacking the boat. _Ow_ , he said miserably, and crawled to her with her belly on the bottom of the boat. _Oh. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all._

The man was unwinding the rope that tied them to the dock. And tossing it in after them, the boat slowly wheeling out into the current.

Without the man.

_Uhhhh_ , Emily said, bolting upright. Next to her, Spencer was doing the same. _Uhhh! Spencer!_

_Oh, no, um, hey!_ Spencer barked, his white teeth flashing as he bared them. _We don’t—what are you— **woah!**_

The last word was shouted as they both fell. The boat surged under them, suddenly dragged forward out from under their paws. Tumbling over each other, Emily ended up on her side with the saddle-bags and her belly of pups conspiring to never let her stand the fuck up again. Spencer, annoyingly nimble, was back up and leaning over the bow of the boat far enough that she struggled harder so she could bolt to him and grab the coat before he tipped into the arctic waters.

_The fuck are you doing_? she wheezed, trying to tug him back, her boots squeaking on the fibreglass below. Behind them, the dock was receding quickly as the boat was hauled by an unseen force. Water splashed, metal clinked against metal, and Spencer squeaked. It was his ‘there’s a polar bear’ noise of excitement, and she could feel him quivering.

_Em, Em, Em,_ he chattered, tail wagging and thumping against her chest with every exuberant swipe. _We’re being pulled by **seals**!_

Emily blinked. Pondered that. Released his coat and inched up next to him, staring curiously over the side to the front of the boat where six ropes were attached to the bow. Under the deep blue of the water, sleek grey shapes wheeled and swayed, occasionally breeching the surface with only the slightest splash announcing their presence.

_Holy what the fuck,_ she managed, feeling her eyes widening. _What the… Spencer?_

_I think they’re shapeshifters!_ Spencer replied, paws up now with no care for the danger he was in if the boat rocked unexpectedly. _Oh, oh! This must be who he was signalling—and the language he was speaking! Seal shifters are notoriously isolated—they refuse contact with most humans and other species—we don’t even know their language! Why do they help him? How many are there? Oh, there are more under the—ah!_

He squealed and leapt back as a seal not holding onto the ropes that pulled them surged out of the water with a barking laugh and sprayed freezing water up onto their muzzles. Spinning away, still laughing, the seal leapt and dived with a flick of its wide tail, dark eyes gleeful. Emily registered white teeth, fishy breath, and then water. Spluttering and gasping, she dropped back into the boat and shook her face dry, blinking salt from her eyes and snarling in anger.

_I think they want us in the boat,_ Spencer said, and sneezed, booted paws rubbing the goggles. _Oops._

_I hate them,_ Emily grumbled, curling up right in the centre where she wouldn’t get _sealed_ on. _I hate the arctic. I hate seals. I hate fish. I hate boats._ Her stomach tightened, nausea suddenly burning her mouth and throat with bile. _I hate being **pregnant**! _ From below the boat, there was the distinct hint of many minds laughing.

The novelty of travelling in a seal-drawn boat took a little while to wear thin, especially with Spencer there to keep up a steady chatter of facts about seals and the ocean and, weirdly, husky mushers. She just lay next to him, focused on not puking, letting her heart thump along with the slap of waves on the boat. The blizzard blown over, the world around them was quiet except for the barking of the seals as they played around them—there were more than the six that Spence had counted pulling them, taking it in turns to tug at the ropes—and the occasional shriek of sea birds.

At one point, they jerked suddenly to shallow waters, the boat grinding up onto a rocky shore. Curious, they both popped up and stared in wonder as the seals shifted back into the form of naked, grease-covered women who danced and chattered about along the shoreline, making what were clearly rude gestures to the apparently empty ocean. When Spencer went to leap out of the boat, one of the woman pushed him inelegantly back in, laughing at his expression and scratching him under the chin.

Emily snorted, as this brought his eye-line almost directly in view with the woman’s tits. Nudity was nothing to a wolf, or a seal apparently, but his gaze was _definitely_ not distracted.

_Perve,_ she teased, and he huffed and said nothing. _What on earth are they doing? Are they mad? It’s freezing!_ The woman didn’t seem to notice the cold, now singing a rough, taunting song to the waters. Emily flicked her ears, hearing—distantly—a moaning echo to that song. Whistling, almost.

And then again.

_Oh,_ said Spencer suddenly, and it wasn’t his ‘polar bear oh my god’ voice anymore. It was awed. It was the voice he’d used to tell her about the stars back at the compound, before it had become a nightmare she was trapped alone in. _Oh, Emily…_

She looked. Swallowed. Wasn’t sure how she felt except _stunned_ as a huge black shape burst from the water and called deeply. It rolled, exposing white belly, black back, a dark eye that watched them curiously from within a creamy mask. Rolled again and dived, seemingly taking forever to hide itself beneath the waves as back broke to curving fin to back again, and finally, ending in a huge tail that tossed white sprays of foam into the air and came down with a _thwack_ that made her bones ache.

_Killer whale,_ she breathed, proved wrong moments later as more shapes broke the water. _Oh oh. Killer **whales** … _There were babies too, smaller black arches that squeaked and whistled happily along as they too broke the water to stare at the mocking seals.

_Not actually whales,_ Spencer said absently, his eyes locked on the massive beasts. _Closer to dolphins really. Killer whale is a misnomer. Oh… orcas, Emily. We’re seeing **orcas**!_

_Yeah, we are,_ she murmured, and pressed close to him. _In a boat pulled by seals. Somehow, I don’t think they’re fans._ Spencer chuckled in her mind, a tingly, delightful feeling, and she closed her eyes as a wash of longing swept over her. It was… painful. To be here, watching this amazing thing, this new experience—something that should have been awe-inspiring—and to feel so isolated from him. Between them lay the months of isolation, his betrayal, her guilt and resentment. And all she wanted was to open her eyes again and pretend this was incredible instead of melancholic.

As though they could sense her growing dismay, the puppies called inside her. The two twined minds calling to each other, muted. The third, louder suddenly, as it reached for her mind. Called again with a sense that was almost emotion but not quite. Called once more, and then _touched_.

It was brush, a whisper, a flicker of personality. Sleepy and not fully realized yet, but it was _real_.

_Oh my god,_ she said, and sat down. The seals all turned to look at her, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. The orcas forgotten, she stared blankly at the lapping water. The tiny mind inside her touched again. A single feeling.

_Love_.

_What was that?_ Spencer asked, looking at her. _I heard that. Who spoke? Was that a projection? Is someone here?_

_Spence,_ she said, shoving closer to him with her heart hammering. Nervous, maybe, or shocked or panicking a little or maybe just overwhelmed. Behind them, the orcas were leaving. _That was… them. They’re…_

_Alive,_ he breathed, twisting to look at her belly. Listening, now, so intently she could almost see him vibrating with desperate focus. _Alive. Real. Emily… if they’re projecting…_

He didn’t have to finish it. She already knew. She could _feel_ it, deep in her body.

_We’re running out of time,_ she said grimly. As though they sensed the change in emotions on the boat, the seals had shifted back and were watching silently, black button-eyes expressionless. _We need to hurry._

They were coming.

 

* * *

 

They were deposited unceremoniously on the icy mouth of a yawning river. The river still flowed, depositing chucks of ice and stone out into the ocean, and Spencer watched it for the longest time as Emily stared at the vanishing blob of their boat on the horizon.

_I don’t like how much debris is in that water,_ he said finally, jolting her out of her own mind. She turned to him as he stood and shook the creakiness out of limbs that had been folded under him for the long day of being drawn along the coast. _If the slope increases, avalanches could be a problem._

_We’ll deal with that when we come to it,_ she replied pertly, turning her back on the coast that had gotten them this far. Despite only being a day away from the compound and the room, it felt very distant. Unreal, almost, when she turned and was faced with what appeared to be an endless flat void of snow. _Time to start walking, bucko._

And walk they did. Following the winding, curving river, as the sun dipped below the horizon and vanished, leaving them in a frozen, white world. The river gurgled to their side, crashing along with ice groaning as it was torn into the churning water, but everywhere else was hollowly forgotten, muted, numb. They didn’t speak because it felt almost sacred.

They were alone. Only them and the river and the huff of their breathing narrating their journey. The stars above were a wildly vivid map on a deep purple sky. The wind was quiet, picking up only once and gusting the snow far to their right into a whistling tunnel that yawned up and to the sky like a whitish dust devil on the horizon. They watched it, warily, but it spun away and died down on its own without becoming a threat.

_Should we stop to eat?_ Spencer asked once, but she shook her head and grimly continued. She’d continue until her legs dropped out from under her, strangely sure that if they stalled on this timeless flat land they’d never start again. They’d be swallowed, somehow, by the snow and the sky and the wind until there was nothing left to remember them by but some snap-dried bones buried deep and thin scraps of fur caught by the breeze. Not to mention, if they stopped to eat, one of them would likely have to be human in order to fumble the food out of the tightly packed saddlebags. Which would be Spencer. Which would mean undressing his wolfish winter-wear, redressing him immediately as soon as he shifted before he froze, rinse repeat… it would take far too long.

They moved doggedly on.

Before the sun rose, they slept. Dug down into a bank of snow with Spencer curled behind and partly over her, and with her snout shoved out to stop them from being buried. It made a tight, cosy hole of snow and fur, and they slept with their heartbeats echoing around them and the soft touches of the pups’ minds growing louder.

She dreamed of the room and the walls closing in and woke with her bladder screaming at her and her body shuddering. Spencer was awake too, silent with his hazel eyes watching her. She ignored his worry, shoving out of the snow den to piss and lap at the water, washing away the grimy feeling of being trapped and tricking her aching gut into believing it was being fed.

They moved onward. Ahead of them, as the morning fog faded slightly, they could see the mountains cresting high into the cloudy sky. Suggestively close. Emily knew they were nowhere as near as they seemed, especially as the hours ground on and their bodies began to slow and throb and the range remained stubbornly plopped all the way over there.

_I’m sorry,_ Spencer said suddenly as the sun tilted high and sharp enough through the low cloud cover that they had to squint against the glare on the unbroken snow around them. She paused, snuffing at the snow where a hare’s tracks scuffed it up, and waited for him to expand on that. _For, uh, leaving you… in that room._ He’d shaken the goggles off at some point, probably while they were sleeping, and they hung around his neck to bump against his chest.

_Hmm?_ she questioned, unwilling to divulge any more than that.

_I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t realize they’d hurt you so bad._ His voice was thin, horrified, and she wondered long he’d laid there awake watching her.

_I’m not hurt. I’m angry._ She ran ahead, scowling as the wind picked up and blew fog back towards them. The straps of the back were pinching at her belly, there was a low ache shifting between her hips that gnawed at her relentlessly, and she felt sticky and overwarm. _You’ve done nothing but lie and keep secrets from me since we escaped._

_When did I lie?_ He sounded wounded. Good. _Emily, everything I did, I did for—_

_Don’t give me that load of clichéd crap,_ she spat, digging her paws in and relishing the screaming ache of her muscles as she pushed them on and on. The river flashed by, their paws sinking deep as they sped up, and she could hear him wheezing as his body struggled to keep up. _What, you need to protect me because I’m a woman, is that it? Pregnant and useless now? I can outrun, outfight, outhunt you any day of the week, Spencer Reid, so don’t pull that ‘protect you’ bullshit. You’re not Aaron. Stop trying to be him._

He inhaled sharply. It took almost a minute for her to realize he’d stopped, skidding to a halt and turning to find him a dark dot on the snow already. She refused to walk back for him, sitting down with a _hpmh_ and waiting for him to get over himself and walk up to her. And he did, reluctantly, his head low and eyes stony.

_Is that it?_ he asked, his voice simmering. _Is that the problem, Emily? It’s not that I left you in the room—and I **know** you’ve been having nightmares about it—and it’s not that I didn’t tell you everything about Ethan or Quinn or what I did to help them… it’s that I’m not **him**. I’m not as strong or as capable or as **pure** as he is, and you resent that, don’t you?_

_I resent that my agency was taken from me,_ she said carefully, sensing a vicious anger simmering under the surface that wasn’t familiar or kind and recognising that she’d hit a deeply buried nerve. _I resent that we both had our agencies stripped from us. And, yes, I resent that I’m here fighting for my life instead of home by his side fighting for the lives of others. I’m also really fucking pissed that they’ve gotten in our heads as much as they have, okay, because the Spencer Reid I know would have let me fight by his side. He wouldn’t have subscribed to some archaic idea of needing to protect me beyond what he’d do for any of his team or pack… that was always what I loved most about you. Aaron? He’s doesn’t trust women as much as men, and he’d have me riding a desk at the first hint of me being knocked up. I resent… I resent that you think in order to do this with me you have to be him. Because I don’t need him right now, Spencer. I need **you**._

Somewhere between beginning her rant and ending it, her bitterness had trickled away. Something had burst from her, raw and festering and angry, and been blown away by the fog-borne wind, or washed away by the icy waters alongside them.

_Emily,_ he said suddenly, his nose twitching, and she groaned. He wasn’t just going to let it go, was he? He was going to pick at some small— _Emily!_

He paced closer, eyes wide, and she scented it. Something thick and sweet, coppery tinged. She turned awkwardly around her stomach, and stared at the thin rivet of clear wet working down her leg. It was thick, barely there, but she could scent more.

_What is that?_ she asked sharply, desperately trying to think back to high school health classes. _Spencer, what is that?_ Almost as an answer, there was a strange, undulating pull that worked down her spine to coil between her hips, her body shuddering down with it.

_It’s not amniotic fluid,_ he soothed, pressing close with his saddlebag dragging across hers. _I think it’s the operculum—it’s an early sign of labour. An early sign, Em, it could still be a week until—_

Another roll of that painful, cramping pull and she whined, tail curling between her legs. She wanted to hide, to run from this, to curl up in a deep, dark den and wait it out. Warmth and safety and Spencer and food and—

She pushed it away. There was no time to turn soft and wanting now.

_We have to move_ , she said firmly, turning back to those looming mountains. Closer now, but still miles away. _I’m not throwing pups down next to a bear-infested river._

They ran and ran and ran and every mile increasingly pulled at her until she was gasping more often than not. The sun rose and dipped and vanished again. They kept going. She would not stop. They were going to make it.

And they did.

 

* * *

 

_Spence,_ she managed, her voice sharp as the rolling pain grew sharper, more insistent. The river roared beside them, the slope steep and demanding. Yawning above, higher than she could crane her neck back, the mountains yawned. They slipped through a ravine bitten through the ranges by the river’s incessant flow, stumbling on shale and rocks and ice. It was freezing, bitterly cold, and the huge river sent a permanent rain of watery droplets to settle on their coats and freeze into tiny flakes of ice. _Spencer!_ she barked again, and felt it.

Weeks, he’d said. _Weeks_ , he’d said, but there was a hot rush of fluid and wet and hurting and he turned to look at her with his eyes white-ringed with stress. They were out in the open. Exposed. Vulnerable.

And they were out of time.

_We’ll find somewhere,_ he told her firmly, turning and surging forward. She followed, feeling hot and fussy and tense and scared, her legs wobbling under her. _We’ll find somewhere, I promise! Just hold on! Don’t… don’t push!_

_Tell your children that!_ she snarled in reply as they kicked and lurched inside her. _They’re impatient little fucks, Spencer!_

_I’m trying!_ he howled in reply, and vanished with a clatter of rocks to desperately search the sides of the frozen ravine for _anything_. Ice sheered down the rocky cliffs, sinking deep into the dark slate sides. Water trickled, gushed, ran. It was a frozen, dank _hellhole_ , and she was going to fucking give birth here, in the cold and the wind and the dark, she just knew it. She caught a scent on the wind and shrieked a bark in Spencer’s general direction. _Bear_. Bear and goat and ice and _fuck_. Another pull and she howled in a panic and bolted forward. The fluid on her legs cooling in the frozen air and her body screaming at her to _go deep, go hide, be safe._

_Here!_

She’d never heard anything so fucking good in her life than that singular word. She lurched towards it, finding him digging at a narrow crack in the rocky cliff-side, trying to make it wider to squeeze in. As soon as they could, they inched inside, the edges catching on the bags. It wasn’t deep or warm or cosy, the floors sharply sloped and littered with biting shards of rock, but they didn’t have a choice. She whined, circled, whined some more. It wasn’t right it wasn’t right it wasn’t right. A gust of wind brought a wave of cold water-logged air that made them both shiver, as well as vicious scent of _bearpredatorunsafe_ that they both snarled at.

_We can’t,_ she howled, and hunkered low to squeeze her legs tighter and will down the pulling, crawling feeling of her insides rearranging themselves without her permission. _We can’t, Spence, we can’t—_

He whined with her, his scent thick and male and panicked, feeding off her pain and fright. She tried to pull back, to give him space to think, but he’d already slipped away and through the exit, vanishing in a scrabble of panicked paws.

_Spence!_ she screamed, knowing she sounded manic, knowing she was freaking out but unable to calm down. _Don’t leave me! Don’t—_

But he was gone and she sobbed, flopping down and squeaking stupidly when the rocks bit cruelly into her legs. At least the bags spared her flanks, but they made it impossible for her to work her way around her shuddering belly to lick at the damp, aching space between her legs. It was raw, primal dread, and she surged back up and raged at everything.

_Fuck this!_ she snarled, and hunched over as her body rippled. _Fuck them and fuck you and fuck—_

A touch on her mind. Spencer, determined and soothing. She clung to that.

_Together_ , he promised, and she curled around his mind as he ran up a tight incline to higher ground, casting his eyes on the open rocks around. _We’re together. We’re okay._

_We’re okay, we’re okay,_ she chanted with him. _We’re okay, we’re okay…_

He found a new den. Not too far but far enough, and by the time she’d struggled up the same steep slope he’d run easily up, her legs were jelly and her body was a constant source of cramping pain.

_We’re okay,_ he coaxed, leaning against her side and pacing her step by step. _Not much longer._

_We’re okay,_ he repeated, biting the strap of the saddlebag loose and carrying them in his mouth when they slid under the coat and off of her. Free of their weight, she pushed on. _We’re okay._

_We’re okay,_ she wheezed, finding the den he’d found. Sandy instead of rocky. The opening was wide, too wide, wind ripping in and leaving everything icy, but the back of the den was sheltered and almost cosy. She inched back, pressed against the wall, slid down. Moaned as her body fought her. Closed her eyes and just let it happen for a few moments, knowing she needed to dig down into the sand, try to make it _safer_ , warmer, _anything_ , but unable to think through her throbbing muscles and her aching back and the sharp, sharp pain that kept splintering her focus.

_I don’t want this_ , she gasped, feeling another rush of wet. _I don’t want to be a mom. I want to be **me**._

_You’re still you,_ Spencer sent distantly, somewhere, she wasn’t sure, and then he vanished. She panicked for a wild moment, but there was a rustle of movement and he slid into the den, human and shivering with only a coat drawn around his naked body. He hunched close, his hands icy cold and almost wet. Washed. He’d washed them. He was shaking convulsively, snot and water running from his face freezing into icicles on his nose and chin. The wind dropped suddenly, the entrance to the den covered by the coat he’d worn as a wolf pinned over it. “It’s okay,” he said firmly, wiggling around behind her and coaxing her front half onto his lap to stop himself from freezing to death. One hand found her ruff and wound through the fur, stroking soothingly. The other worked lower, rubbing her side gently. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. It’s time.”

She closed her eyes, allowed herself to mourn her life as it had been, and then—as another rolling shudder worked through her—she pushed. 


	19. Twilight Thriving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer slipped from wolf to human incessantly over the next few hours, alternating from soothing her verbally to curling behind her as a human with his hands working tight circles on her abdomen. She craved that contact. She hated that contact. She loved it. She wanted more, less, just _anything_ so that this would be over. Somewhere, she was aware that he was risking hypothermia, frostbite, all of the above, but it was impossible to prioritise.

It was all-consuming. She could focus on him, distantly, but only distantly. Her body was too loud, the clamour of her mind drowning out even the eager thrums of the pups. _Push now_ , her instincts urged, so she did, and she closed her eyes, and she shut him out. Sure that he was panicking. Unable to react to that.

_I’m okay,_ she said at one point, but he was human again and fumbling around in the bags for a wind-up flashlight she hadn’t known had been packed.

“Eat,” he told her firmly, offering her some of the meat. “Your blood glucose level will be low from travelling so hard without food. You have to eat for the pups.”

It was for the pups, so she ate despite having absolutely no interest in the idea of it. Everything hurt, everything was tight and tense and squeezing tighter, and she felt like her whole body was trying to up and crawl out of her along with them. She ate and he did too, and she licked the tang of dried meat from his fingers with a humming sense of affection that quickly faded when the contractions started up again.

He switched to wolf and, for the first time, groomed her. She lay on her side, exhausted already after the countless hours of travelling and then the countless hours since her body had decided to rebel against her, barely able to respond to her instinctual goading to push with the contractions. But she noted his tongue on her; beginning with her foamy muzzle and strained throat and working down to where her fur was matted from the straps of the saddlebags.

_Focus on me if it gets too much,_ he urged her, so she did. Pushed the pain away and drifted with his intense attention to her body. Down her belly, shivering a little as it rippled against him. Her haunches, her flanks, her sore paws. All of her muscles spent below his clever tongue. He was a gentle, attentive groomer, and she felt undone, spooling apart a little underneath him.

Hind legs, working the fluid and the mess from the inner fur despite her wearily telling him not to bother, she was about to make a damn mess of it anyway. They’d sacrificed her coat to the cause, spreading that under her so she didn’t dump the pups unceremoniously right out onto the sandy floor. Up her legs he worked, leaving them clean and relaxed, only hesitating a little before working on the fur around her genitals. She twitched and growled and whined, thankful for the pressure and the cleanliness, but tender and sore at every touch. As well as—abstractedly—embarrassed. And then she forgot to be embarrassed because her body surged and she surged with it and felt something begin to press free with a yelp.

A flicker and he was human, one hand bracing her leg slightly, the other tensed and waiting. His eyes flitting from the slick rush of slowly emerging pup and back to her face, murmuring endless streams of something that she couldn’t focus on.

A ripple of pain and she went away for a little bit, gasping. Pushed and whined and pushed again as something finally heaved free, Spencer making some kind of awed noise. She breathed, closed her eyes, chest hitching. Pushed once more and felt it ease, relax, moaning almost with relief before struggling up and twisting around to stare at what she’d done.

A puppy. A genuine, living puppy wiggling weakly in its daddy’s hands, still covered in goop and red and the white-yellow sac that had kept it alive. Emily blinked and stared for a moment before Spencer inched closer and deposited it gently between her paws. Her brain hadn’t even kicked back in before she ducked her head and nipped gently at the filmy skin, licking it away from a tiny nose and tightly scrunched eyes. The puppy wiggled, snuffed at the air, and sneezed crankily, little paws flailing. Already complaining about the state of the world.

_We’re here_ , announced the little mind she’d felt focusing on her even before being born. A loud, smug feeling of _hello_ that demanded attention and food and love and _everything_.

_Oh,_ said Emily, and felt something twist and thump into life inside her. Something warm and shocked and deep. She nudged the puppy, just to see it wiggle some more, just to feel that little mind grumble at her as the mouth searched for milk.

“Don’t rush on the cord,” Spencer murmured, his voice close. She twitched and looked up at him, seeing the feeling in her chest written on his face. He hovered a hand between them, wanting to touch, scared to touch, and his expression was _hungry_. “It won’t hurt…” He paused, and curled a single finger down to trace their puppy’s side. Emily shivered with _want,_ because it was a gorgeous, single moment, and with _love_ , because that was this feeling, and with _shock_ , because the pup was smaller than his hand, almost, and so so vulnerable. The finger curled, lifting a tiny leg and an indignantly tucked tail. “… her. It won’t hurt her to wait…” And he closed his eyes and just breathed and smiled, his cheeks bright in the light from the flashlight abandoned in his lap.

_Come here,_ she asked him, and despite him not being able to hear her, he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. She licked him, the tears from his face, and he pressed his cheek against her and shook a little, his hand cupped over the pup between them.

Another contraction, sharp and demanding.

“We’re not done yet, sweethearts,” he whispered into her fur, and sat back up. Drew the coat back tighter around his shoulders and carefully shifted their puppy from Emily’s paws to her nipple where she latched on greedily, almost blending in perfectly with her slick-dark fur against Emily’s own shadowed coat.

_Hey math genius, we’ve got a problem,_ she panted, flopping back down. _Three pups and I’ve only got two of those. Remind me when I’m not shoving your giant-headed offspring out of my vagina to point that out._

Spencer, human and mute to her, didn’t answer, just resumed his gentle stroking of her sides.

Everything turned hazy and hurting after that, the world skewing a bit. It felt like everything was fine. Illusionary comfort. She wasn’t even aware she was in trouble until she was too far in to gasp for help. Part of her was aware of nipping the umbilical cord free from her first-born pup, the coppery-rich taste of that. Part of her was aware of Spencer talking as a human and time passing and Spencer talking as a wolf and time passing and then Spencer shaking her gently. But she was tired, so tired, and hot and shivering and the den was like a furnace with her trapped in the centre. And she was pushing, still pushing, doing what her body asked, but it was stopped, stalled, and she was being torn in two by some terrible force deep within her. Mouth lolling open and sides heaving, she tried to lift her head and realized she couldn’t. Couldn’t blink, couldn’t move, couldn’t even whine. Just lay there. Too tired to push. Too tired to.

She closed her eyes, shuddered. Had time passed? She thought maybe.

Spencer… talking. Probably.

And she

drifted

away

…

..

.

_The room_.

_The room_ but she wasn’t in it. She was peering in, cranky with the heat and the sticky-gross feeling between her legs, and her daughter stared tearfully back up at her.

“Don’t want to stay in here,” her daughter said, curling up tight with her chubby knees pulled to her bare chest. Shivering in the cold, and Emily rolled her eyes. _Weak._ “Mama, let me out. I’ll be good. I won’t be doggy.”

But she had to learn, so Emily closed the

_Emily._

_Emily!_

**_Emily!_ **

Eyes opened. Not a room. A cave. A cold cave with light leaking in like rain dripping through the door. Around a barrier that fluttered and slapped with the wind. She stared at it. Lost herself in it. A paw thumped into her side and she gasped and tried to move and felt everything waver around her.

_Spence?_ she asked the world groggily. _Don’t…_

_They’re not moving, Em. The twins aren’t moving. I think they’re stuck. Are you listening?_

Sure, she was, but the world was loud and her brain was loud and easy to lose and she did actually lose herself for a little while, closing her eyes and listening intently and wandering away—

_Emily. Pay attention._

Shit, she knew that voice. Couldn’t not know that voice. Laughed because she was stupidly relieved to hear that voice, for some reason.

_Hi, Aaron,_ she sent, still laughing. _You sound frustrated._

_Listen to me. I’m going to have to help you, okay? It’s… going to hurt._

_Mmm,_ she agreed, burrowing her nose under her paws and relaxing back into the bed. If they didn’t have a case today, she wasn’t getting up. Plus, she was cramping like a bitch. Maybe if she looked woeful enough, he’d bring her breakfast and rub her back, like the good wolf he was. _Do what you have to, love. I trust you._

_Oh, Emily…_ He sounded hurt. So hurt and distant and his voice practically moaned the words. She wiggled against the ooze of his fear and tried to look at him.

_Why are you scared?_ she asked, and felt him press close. Felt him shift. Felt lips press hard against her skull. _Is something wrong with Jack? Aaron?_

_Aaron?_

Then there was a cold, rough pressure that her body screamed against and she screamed with it. Demanding and insistent and pressing deep inside her until she was splitting, cracking, scorching and she snarled and snarled and lashed out furiously. A fog of red and white and black and she heard someone cry out and then _pull_ and push _all at fucking once and she couldn’t she couldn’t she was breaking stopstopstopstopstop—_

Something inside her twisted and gave and she felt a rush of heat and burning and then

nothing at all

except a whisper…

( _we’re here_

_we’re alive_ )

 

* * *

 

She woke slowly, but she did wake. She was even slightly aware that maybe she was lucky to wake. Although, she almost wished she wasn’t. Her body felt hollow and wrung dry, beyond a point of exhaustion she’d never passed before. The den stunk of blood and piss and awful things, her hips and legs disgustingly matted.

Or… not.

She twitched and her fur wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t as gross as it could have been. Someone had cleaned her, painstakingly, and she remembered the phantom touch of a loving tongue and thought of Aaron. Twitched again and felt a cool wind from the outside sneak across her.

_Alive_ , that sharp cold reminded her. Alive to feel the two hungry mouths working for their dinner, paws digging insistently into her chest. Alive to listen to the five steady heartbeats in this frozen hole on the side of a mountain. Alive to turn her aching head around to examine the warm, firm pressure of Spencer asleep at her back. Wolf again, with his head canted backwards at an angle she knew was only possible if he’d forced himself to stay awake until his body had simply given up and taken the option out of his hands. Breathing deeply. The shoulder that was bared to her was torn, bitten though. She’d bitten him. She stared at that, feeling sick, and then looked down.

Against the white blaze on his chest, huddled deep into his fur and the crooks of his forelegs, their first child slept. A dark shadow of a puppy with her paws tangled into her dad’s fur as she snoozed with the firm knowledge that everything in the world was okay and safe and wonderful.

With difficulty, Emily managed to ease her head back to peer down at the two pups feeding. Their fur was soft and clean. A weary glance around the den confirmed that the remains of the birth had been mostly disposed of. Spencer had done her proud while she’d slept. And she’d bitten him. Like an animal. She looked back at the pups to try and push that away. Something in her ached at the sight, because they were both a gorgeous, honeyed colour that had her thinking of photos on the wall and two boys smiling. Honeyed all the way through with black dorsal stripes down their backs to their stubby black-tipped tails.

_Oh, you’re your daddy’s babes,_ she told them, something thick and choking pushing into her throat and making her breath hiccup a little. _Look at you both… my litter of Little Paws…_

They kept eating, placidly intent on their goal. She sniffed, learning them. A boy and a girl. She blinked and sniffed again.

Definitely a boy and a girl.

_Thought you said they were identical,_ she teased Spencer, trying to turn back to lick him and finding she’d used up any energy she had. _Guess even… a genius… wrong sometimes…_

And she drifted away again, safe with her family at her belly and her back.

 

* * *

 

_I think we have to move the pups_ , Spencer said at some point in the sleepy days following the birth. He’d taken to haunting the opening of the den, flittering back and forth to sniff at her and the pups before returning to his careful guard. _We’re very exposed here._

_We will,_ she agreed drowsily. _Just… let me sleep._ Spencer looked at her with his brow furrowed in an uncanine frown.

_This isn’t normal, I don’t think_ , he said uncertainly. _You’re so tired._

_M’fine,_ she replied, and ignored his worry. It was incessant and clawing and hadn’t let up from the first moment he’d realized she was awake and pushed against her, muzzle buried in her ruff and inhaling her scent frantically. _Couple more days and we’ll move on…_

_Okay, but I’m going to start looking now. Will you be okay alone for a few hours while I search?_

_Sure,_ she sent back, and wiggled so she could grab their first-born pup by her rear end and pull her away from where she was bullying her smaller siblings for the lion’s share of the milk. _This greedy thing here, she’s going to be the size of a draft horse soon if she keeps this up. We’ll have to name her Glutton._

_Tradition is to avoid naming any pups before the first year,_ Spencer replied absently, pawing through the saddlebags. She blinked and looked at him oddly, because that _was_ a tradition, but a damn old one. No one did that anymore. He looked back, his expression strange. _I think we should probably follow that._

_What? Why?_ She was indignant. What a dumb… and she fell quiet as she thought it through.  Wild wolves didn’t name pups before the first year was out because that was when they were most often lost. And they were… very alone out here.

_Okay,_ she agreed softly, and licked protectively at her black-coated puppy’s silky fur. _Okay…_

They wouldn’t lose them. Not one of them. She was damn well determined.

_I’ll be back,_ Spencer promised, and vanished from the den. Without him there, it felt empty, dreary. She was tired, sure, but she was also _bored._ Nothing but sand and rock and three little puppy potatoes who didn’t do much of anything but eat and sleep and whine. As if to agree, the black puppy squeaked loudly.

A rock clicked outside.

_Back already?_ Emily asked, turning her head to the opening. Something snuffed. Something big.

Something not Spencer.

Emily burst upright with a roaring bark, hearing a following one echo back to her as Spencer heard her screaming warning. Whatever was outside hesitated, large paws shifting on the rock as it turned its dangerous attention to her.

_Don’t leave the den!_ Spencer howled, and her gut lurched with raw, watery fear. The puppies squealed angrily, dislodged from her when she’d leapt upright and voicing their displeasure loudly.

_Spence, don’t—_ she managed, right before she heard him snarl and bark. A yipping, furious call that betrayed his coyote blood, and absolutely furious. _Come and get me_ that call demanded. _You won’t escape unharmed. Danger danger!_

Emily sniffed the air and smelled nothing but puppies and the faint scent of the birth, the wind all wrong to bring scent into the den. Another reason it was a _shit_ den, and she should have listened, should have—

Whatever was outside roared.

_Bear_ , shrieked Emily’s brain, and she was hunkered down over-top of her helpless pups before she could consciously react. _Bear_ and she wanted to press back against the wall or run run run away. Bear, and Spencer was out there.

Spencer growled again, a low throbbing call, and Emily closed her eyes and prayed to anyone listening that he’d just _go._ And then the bear roared again, this time with intent, and she was stupid. Stupid and reactive, and she surged up and out of the den with her fangs bared and hackles up. A big, dangerous wolf, despite the lingering scent of exhaustion on her fur, and she refused to let him face this alone.

Outside, the light struck her eyes and almost blinded her. Paws skittering on the stones, she skidded to a stop and reared, returning the roar with one of her own. The bear turned to face her, Spencer stalking around its front. Brown and shaggy and half-grown.

Not a polar bear.

Thank _fuck_.

The grizzly was young and male, body fat and ready for winter. Sleepy eyed and lazy, she watched him consider the easy meal in the den behind her, licking his lips from the meal he’d dug up from a shallow hole Spencer had scraped in the permafrost to dispose of the offal from her labour.

_He’ll leave,_ Spencer said firmly, arching his spine like a cat and darting forward to snap at the grizzly’s face before dancing out of reach of those dangerous claws. _He’s ready to hibernate. Not ready to take on food that fights back. Keep advancing._

She did. Kept pushing and snarling until Spencer was by her side and they could edge the bear away from their den. Finally, the bear huffed and turned to shamble away, taking his time so they knew just how much he didn’t care for them. And then he was gone and they leaned on each other, breathing raggedly with the shrill cries of lonely puppies echoing down the slope to their ears. Spencer looked at her. She licked his muzzle, painfully relieved that he was _okay,_ and he pulled away.

_What?_ she asked, and already knew. She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up and left the den to prove a point, and it wasn’t that she was female or a mother or weaker than him—he was mad because she had been _there_ and he hadn’t, and still she’d left them. And he knew she knew, so he didn’t spell it out for her. The restrained anger and disappointment in his tone said enough.

_We’re not in this for ourselves anymore,_ he said coolly. _It’s not just our lives we’re fighting for._ And he walked back to the den with his hackles still high and her trailing behind like a scolded child.

Preparations after that were brisk and wordless. They ate the rest of the meat in the bags, needing the extra room. Spencer turned human to repack them evenly, leaving space in one set so they could curl the puppies in them.

_I carried them for nine months, it’s your turn now,_ she’d teased him, and he hadn’t even chuckled. As soon as they were done, he vanished with one lot on his back. Leaving her with the pups and her guilt. _I’m sorry,_ she told the puppies when he was out of earshot. _I… didn’t leave **you**. I’m just not used to standing by when my team is in the firing line. And I’m not used to being anyone’s mom. You’ll have to give me some space to work it out, okay?_

The puppies, two of them intent on milk and the third—the little male—napping on her legs, ignored her. She eyed him worriedly. He’d refused to latch before, so he was missing his turn to feed, clearly as uninterested as his father was in food if there were more exciting things going on around him. She nudged closer, examining his fledgling markings. The barest promise of white on his chest, and a single white-socked paw.

Daddy’s pups indeed. There’d be no question of his parentage.

_It’s me,_ Spencer breathed, and she jumped and turned to the door as he slid inside, saddlebag-less. Outside, civil twilight had fallen. Almost night. Almost polar night, she realized. According to Spencer, any one of these days could be their last before the long dark came. _I found somewhere._

The pups were put, reluctantly, into the bags. They complained for a little before settling down. The male and the bigger firstborn fell instantly asleep. Cuddled up next to her brother, the honey female looked around with blind eyes and tried to pay attention to everything. Emily smiled at her and flicked the flap of the bag shut over them, double checking that the straps held them tight to their father’s back.

_Ready?_ he asked as she pulled his coat onto him. It wasn’t buckled as nicely as hands would do it, and the goggles had been given up on completely, but the cowl was simple enough. The puppies would be warm and their father wouldn’t freeze—they were ready enough, she supposed.

_Take us home, Dr. Reid,_ she said flippantly, and he led them away from the sandy den where they’d welcomed their hesitant family.

 

* * *

 

He’d outdone himself. There was a moment of _are you fucking kidding me_ when he’d led her around the crest of the ridge and along a path so wobbly and narrow she’d almost fallen off just to be contrary, determinedly _not_ looking at the sheer drop to the side of her. Unlike her, he ran across fearlessly and entirely sure of his paws under him. She remembered, suddenly, finding him sitting on a bridge looking down onto her.

But then they rounded the ridge and she was staring down at the valley far, far below, covered in snow and ice and glinting purple in the fading light. The ridge dropped back suddenly into a slim crevice that vanished deep into the mountain. Water trickled within and when she followed him inside, she found a deep den with a soft sandy floor and completely out of the wind. Outside, water bubbled past and down a small inlet. Fresh water just outside the door, although she was sure it would freeze over as winter blew in. Crags hung heavily overhead, guiding the snow away from them.

_It's sparse now, but we can find stuff to line it, make it warmer,_ Spencer murmured as she helped ease the bags from his back. _Nothing can reach us here. I’ll run a rope along that ledge so when you walk across it you’re supported._

_It’s perfect,_ she assured him, and helped him unpack.

And he did just that. As the days slipped on, he proved his worth and then some.

_Killed a goat,_ he announced one day, sauntering in with a bloody haunch in his mouth and his mind smug. _Made a pitfall trap for it. Here, you take this. I’m going to strip as much of its coat I can._

The goat’s hair, and those that followed as Spencer came into his own as a goat hunter, lined their cosy den. The wind dropped down hard outside, the snow began to blow, but they were warm and safe. And well-fed—the meat Spencer brought home was plentiful, for now, and he lost the dullness to his fur as his condition returned.

And she began to relax.

He was out one day, the sun only just having risen it seemed before the weak light began to recede from view. It was hard to explore their new surroundings much when the pups needed feeding every two hours, and she felt skittish and entirely unsure of making this place their home until the pups were mobile enough that the drop outside became a more immediate danger than bears. She nosed through the bags, the flashlight stuck into the rock above and wound up by his human hands before he’d left, using the weak light to categorise their supplies.

There wasn’t much. Spence’s human clothes, the knife, the map…

She paused on that, before tugging it loose gently with her teeth. Cursing the collar that kept her wolf now that she _could_ shift without triggering a potentially fatal miscarriage.

The map slid loose and drifted to the floor, partially unfolding. Within it, was the thing he’d hidden from her. She used her paw to push the map open, and saw why he’d hidden it.

It was a drawing. A charcoal sketch… of _them_. Her, asleep by the fire with her head and upper body sprawled on his lap, utterly relaxed in his arms. And he was awake; his body indistinct and only barely sketched in, but the lighthouse keeper had caught his expression in painful clarity.

He was looking down at her like she was the only thing that existed in his world. She’d seen that look on his face. Recently, too.

When he’d held his daughter for the first time.

_Oh, Spencer,_ she sighed, because the idiot had gone and let himself fall in love. And that had never been part of the plan. She looked at the pups. They hadn’t been part of the plan either, or the wind whistling outside, or the emptiness where her…

She blinked and probed that part of her mind again, where her pack had always been. The part that had been empty until now, a painful reminder of what she’d lost.

But it wasn’t empty anymore. She touched it and didn’t feel alone. The pups wiggled and squeaked in reply— _we’re here_ their minds reassured her—and she felt Spencer’s awareness turn towards her as well from where he was complacently trotting home with a half-white hare in his jaws.

_Huh_ , she said, and sat down to ponder that.

He slid into the den, radiating pride in his catch. _Hunted it myself,_ he told her, tail wagging. She licked his muzzle and assured him that _yes, yes, you’re a very good wolf, what a provider you are_ , and only laughed a little when he repeated her reassurances to the puppies as though they were cognitively aware that Daddy was a good wolf. Spencer wiggled close as she prepared to curl back down in the goat-y nest to feed their demanding children. _Don’t feed them yet, come out here. The final sun is setting. Watch it with me._

She looked up at him. His eyes were bright, his coat shining in the light, and despite the horror of this, this was _suiting_ him. Somehow. Drawing something inside him that had been buried tight for years to the forefront. _You’re not lonely anymore, are you?_ she thought privately, and realized that he wasn’t just inviting her to watch a sunset. He was offering more right now. Maybe he’d already offered it.

Maybe she’d already accepted.

A betrayal to the man she’d been torn away from, but an understandable one, she suspected. And that was why she stood and followed Spencer from their den, from their family they were raising, and out into the polar night. She didn’t leave her pups behind—cosy in their nest, they’d sleep until she returned—but she did leave something behind.

As she stepped out onto that ledge, she felt lighter than she had. As though she’d shed something precious but heavy.

Below them, the valley yawned. Empty, except not really. Teeming with life, even as winter blanketed them. Above them, the sky was cloudless and frozen. The sun fell slowly. They pressed close. And, as the sun fell for the final time that year, it took the stars with it. Or so it seemed.

_The Perseids meteor shower,_ Spencer told her softly, leaning his head on hers as they watched the sky break apart and shatter down into countless tails of brilliant white. _Derived from Perseides, son of Perseus. Incidentally, they’re also the meteors referred to in the song ‘Rocky Mountain High’._ He hummed, deep in his chest, adding; _The titular ‘fire in the sky’ the singer mentions seeing…_

_Didn’t peg you for a John Denver fan,_ she teased, her heart beating slowly and tediously in this moment, his heart beating fast.

_Mom liked it. Said the lyrics were ‘evocative’. I thought they were trite._

_Thought?_ She hadn’t missed the past tense, as the sky continued falling.

He was quiet for a moment, before murmuring softly, ‘ _when he first came to the mountains his life was far away’… I don’t know. It seems… realer, than it did back then. More alive. I understand it now, I think._ And he stood with a surge of movement, thrusting his muzzle to the sky and silhouetted on the ridge. She startled back for a moment, examining his profile. He didn’t look awkward or peculiar or strange in that moment. He was a wild wolf with his soul bared to the sky. The sun was gone now. The polar night was here. He howled. Low and long and when it trailed into his distinctive yipping call, she answered.

Together, for the first time, they sung the night to life.


	20. Heralding Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Six: Chapter Twenty to Twenty-Two**

The trail led in a wobbly line out from the shaded opening of their den and down towards the ridge where the rabbits ran. There was no visible hesitation taken for the darkened world around them. Emily peered down at the broken moonlight on the snow, and sighed.

_Riley’s out again,_ she said, and stepped to the side as a surge of Spencer rocketed past, hurtling down towards the river. _We really need a leash for that kid._

_She was here two minutes ago!_ Spencer howled in his mind and out loud as he barked a stern _come here_ that the other pups yipped back in response to. Emily put her paw down as a tawny bundle of Felicity tried to race after her daddy, feeling Oliver pressing quietly against the back of her hind legs.

_Sit,_ she said sternly, and Felicity whined and headbutted Emily’s ankle. A stubby tail waved, a plaintive eye was turned in Emily’s direction, and in response she showed some teeth. A bit of bite. _I said **sit**._

_Thump_ , went the sound of two puppy butts hitting the floor, Oliver shuffling over on his tail to huddle nervously against his sister. Emily rolled her eyes at the twins and their incorrigible determination to face the unfriendly world together. The mostly unfriendly world. Daddy, in Felicity’s eyes, could do absolutely no wrong. Oliver passively shadowed his sister.

Riley was… Riley.

_Got her,_ came a muffled relay of Spencer’s voice. Puppy tails wagged at the sound, Felicity taking the chance while Emily was distracted to inch towards the exit, eyes innocently averted. _She was up a tree._

_I told you not to teach them to climb,_ Emily told him, leaning her head down to narrow her eyes at Felicity. Her daughter, clearly expecting salvation from Mom in the form of Dad’s return, continued pretending not to see her. _They’re wolves, not goats._

_No goat,_ Felicity repeated, wrinkling her nose at the mention of the hated meat.

_Yuck,_ added Oliver, despite being quite fond of it. _Yuck, Ma._

_Yuck, yuck, yuck!_ chorused Felicity, dancing up and onto her paws and skittering around her reticent brother in a puppy war dance. _Yuck, yuck!_

_Yuck,_ agreed a solemn voice, as Spencer appeared on the ridge, trotting towards them with a black blob of despondent puppy dangling from his jaws. Riley had her paws tucked up tight, her ears back, her voice sulky. _Da, yuck._ Unlike the repetitive parroting of the twins, there was a bite to her tone. A sharp kind of, _Da is yuck,_ inflection that the twins hadn’t laced their voices with. Da, Emily realized, was firmly in the doghouse for this retrieval.

Ha. Served him right. He couldn’t always be the favourite.

Spencer huffed, slipping into the den and dropping Riley with a shove of his paw towards the back of the cave. Dark fur wet with snow, her tongue lolling, Riley ignored this goading and instead rolled over and onto her back with her belly bare, grinning doggedly up at him. As though magnetically drawn to that exposed expanse of black fur, Felicity took two careful wiggles of her rump and threw herself boldly onto her sister with a _rrrrRrrrRR_ of growling.

_Don’t_ , Emily warned Spencer as he twitched towards joining in the fun. _Behavioural management really isn’t your strong suit, is it? We might live in a cave on the ass-end of the world, but we can still ground their fuzzy little butts._

_Play is integral to social and cognitive development,_ he replied with a sheepish wave of his tail, looking down to where Oliver was winding around his legs like a chubby honey-coloured cat. _Hello, Oliver._

_Da,_ Oliver greeted him, reaching a pink nose up for a kiss. Spencer obliged, licking the minute muzzle offered to him. _Food?_

Spencer looked at Emily, who stretched away the sleep and the now-familiar shock of waking to two pups where there should be three, languid with pride that she refused to show. _Do you want me to…?_ Spencer asked, like she was going to tell the guy who could barely see the hares to go out and nab them some dinner. Even as he asked, he glanced plaintively towards their two tussling daughters, his paws shifting hopefully.

_I’ll go,_ she said with a careful step forward, pressing her muzzle to his ruff and slinking around him affectionately. _I need a run anyway._ He agreed, tail wagging, attention already locked on his kids. For a moment, she watched her family. It was dark in the cave, the only light the weak glimmer of the drained flashlight set into the wall, but she could see the healthy gleam of well-fed wolves, bright eyes, the contented delight of everything they’d achieved together.

What she couldn’t see, was mediocrity. There was _nothing_ mediocre about this moment.

She didn’t know the exact timeframe but, as she stepped into the orange-blue dawn of the second day out of the polar night, she could estimate. Fifteen months of bitter cold, of carefully travelling from den to den through the snowbound ranges. Fifteen months of endless hunting, of skirting bear dens, of huddling in a tight ball of black and tan fur with their children pressed within them and the cold pressed without.

_Em?_ Spencer called, realizing she was hesitating in the mouth of the den, looking out over the flat rolls of the tundra in front of them, vanishing into deep green forests across the distant horizon. Behind them, their mountain home yawned. They were free of it. They’d survived. The puppies’ first year, the polar night, the mountains.

They were free. It should be a joyous realization. Instead, she just felt… numb.

_You okay?_ he asked, appearing with Felicity, as always, at his heels. Both looked at her, four curious hazel eyes.

_It’s time to go home,_ she realized out loud with a thrill that raised a ridge of fur along her spine. Fear and horror and excitement all at once. _Back to DC…_

Back to Aaron. A distant memory now, far removed from goats and blizzards and desperate survival. Still so distant, even with his memory teasing her with a half-remembered voice and the whisper of a scent, because between them lay thousands of miles of the unknown. Thousands of miles to traverse with their pups, not even two years old, through the territory of the people who’d hurt them once and would do so again if given the chance.

And at home… Aaron. Her pack. Waiting for a wolf who she suspected had died in that compound. Emily looked at herself now, the animal she’d become, and she… feared that. Feared the wolf who hunted for her family, who’d pull down another creature and take its life with no qualms. Who lived in a cave and ran on the tundra and knew nothing of cases or jets or quiet movie nights in. Would they look at her now and see a wild creature, unfit for them?

But she looked at Spencer, the wolf who’d done all this with her, beside her, without faltering. A far different strength hummed between them than the one they’d walked with that first winter. She _knew_ him now, and he knew her. The charcoal picture, although still tucked away safe from the elements, was hidden no longer. She looked at him and knew that she’d follow him unquestioningly into the unknown right through to the world’s end if he asked it of her.

But she also knew that if he asked it… she’d stay. In this quiet den, perched on the edge of nothing. Living their lives. Some part of her quailed back at the idea of leaving this familiar mountain behind, as though the compound had found all the timid parts of her and brought them out of where the headstrong girl she’d once been had hidden them. As though whatever invisible damage those wolves had caused was hidden by the snow and the night surrounding them, but would be bared for everyone to see if she was forced into being brave once more. She was a wild creature, perhaps, but not a courageous one.

_Yes,_ Spencer agreed, his voice quiet. _We’re going home, Em._ His mind shrank away from hers; she tasted something almost like melancholy inundating his thoughts. She wondered what he really wanted. And then she stopped wondering, licked his muzzle, and slipped away from their den to hunt. One need at a time. One paw in front of the other.

Keep moving forward.

* * *

There wasn’t much to prepare, but starting off was easier talked about then done.

_The pups are still overly dependent on nursing,_ Emily remarked one day, pinning Riley down with her paw to vigorously bathe the pup’s muddy ears while the twins nursed. _Maybe we should wait until they’re less needy._

_They’re basically weaned,_ Spencer had protested, muzzle on his paws and eyes curious. _We’re only using the milk to supplement a restricted diet. It won’t really affect our travelling._

But she frowned and fussed and he let them stay another week.

Spencer sprained his paw trying to nab a sleepy bird from a branch and overestimating the strength of that branch. He said he was fine, but Emily examined the swollen limb critically and worried about what continuous walking on it would do. She hunted twice as hard so he wouldn’t feel bad about his injury, or the time they took to allow it to heal.

They tried drying meat to take with them in the singular saddlebag that had survived three puppies’ teething periods. This experiment ended abruptly when Emily trotted out of her den and found herself muzzle to muzzle with an equally startled black bear, their attempts at drying meat held firmly in its blocky jaws.

_Phobias are illogical by definition,_ she complained to Spencer after he returned from politely showing Mrs. Bear the way _away_ from the big wolves’ den. _A fear of bears is **not** illogical._

_It is a good excuse to move on,_ Spencer remarked, licking snow from his toes and pretending he wasn’t invested in the conversation.

To that, she had no reply.

Riley continued escaping, the twins continued existing in their own little world that they only occasionally allowed their parents access to—fragile touches of two firmly enclosed minds that nonetheless felt of curiosity and a fresh, bright innocence that made Emily’s heart ache a little. Brushing against her children’s minds was oddly reminiscent of what Spencer’s mind had used to feel like, before all of… this. Before the wildness that was an innate, sour part of her had leeched into him as well and turned his hazel eyes hard.

It was that that decided it. She came home with a squirming rabbit one evening, the sun spinning low around the horizon on an arctic angle, and found Spencer asleep with the pups all huddled to his belly. Narrow paws tangled around them, his muzzle slightly open, the flashlight casting a yellow-white light down onto his fur.

She paused, inched closer, felt her heart kick twice, and then saw it. The tinge of grey where once there had been only tan. And her heart skipped. Forgot to beat. For one moment, despite everything terrible she’d seen, this was the most awful. Age, even in this frozen land, crept up on them. Time. Outside of this mountain home, the world still turned and they turned with it.

Spencer blinked awake, eyes bright. _Morning, love,_ he mumbled, voice sleepy-slurred. She shivered at the affectionate name, inching closer and pressing herself against him so their hearts beat together. _Mm, missed you…_ His eyes slipped closed again and he wiggled back, giving her room. Painfully domestic. Completely loving.

_We need to go home,_ she replied blankly, feeling sick. This time without the hesitation. His eyes snapped back open, regarding her warily. By his tummy, she felt Riley slip awake as well, a sudden spitfire consciousness already planning something cheeky. _Anything could have happened while we’ve been away._

_Okay,_ Spencer said softly, knowing he had to strike while she was brave and who she’d used to be. _We’ll leave in the morning, after one last hunt. Food for the walk._

_Hunt together?_ she asked suddenly, recklessly. They’d never done that. Not _together_. The acerbic memory of Spencer losing himself to the pack was too fresh, despite the many months between now and then. Some part of her snarled and bristled at the idea of losing herself to that euphoric intimacy. Some part of her craved it; perhaps even more than how much she had once craved her own pack. And even now, after all this time, they’d never talked about that hunt. The compound was a dark dream that neither of them shared, huddling their hurts close to their hearts as though never speaking of them would shelter the three pups who knew nothing of cruelty.

He knew she was offering something. A hand. A paw. Some rope out of the lonely dark they’d found themselves lost in. His eyes opened properly, his head lifted, and she saw the white blaze on his chest shift as he breathed in and out and in again. A muzzle crept forward, brushed her cheek. Whiskery kisses. She closed her eyes, leaned into it, and let their minds curl together.

_Okay,_ he said, and _loved_ at her gently. Baring himself to rejection. But she couldn’t reject him. Not now. Not ever.

They lay like this, with him loving and her wary, until blue snuck in with the white at the mouth of the den. Wordless and chilled with their breath puffing fog, they rose as one. The puppies, muttering irritably at the early hour, curled in closer into the warm their parents had left behind and continued sleeping. Hopefully, they’d all remain when they returned. Riley included.

Out into the morning the wolves trotted. Across the snowy slopes. Towards the broken line of trees. And into that line, they slipped together, their bearing changing. Low and lithe they turned, two hunters working as one. Emily moved behind Spencer, his light weight carrying him easily across the shallower snow under the canopy of pines, waiting for his head to snap towards a waiting scent. And there. He caught the scent first, his tail lifting and gait bouncing twice with a measured kind of excitement that sent a thrill of _hunt_ rushing through her blood. It wasn’t a scent they normally focused on. Emily could see the readiness to track written in every line of his skinny bearing, but he was waiting for her call. She scented.

_Caribou,_ she murmured, picking up the rough, compact scent of a cow light on the wind. The two wolves stood silent, ears pricked. Across the silence of the dawn, they heard the rustle of branches, the whisper of wide-spread, cloven hooves on snow, the warily measured breathing of a large animal trying to be small and hidden. A distinct clicking sounded.

_That sound is made by small tendons slipping over the sesamoid bones in the caribou’s feet,_ Spencer sent, huge ears swivelling around to pinpoint the location. He was shivering, partly from excitement, partly from the cold, his mouth open and tongue lolling as though panting. _Maximum audible range is one hundred and fifty feet. We’re close._

_She’s young_ , Emily noted, her stomach twisting in anticipation. A caribou was big. A pack job. But… _Alone?_

_Almost certainly pregnant,_ Spencer hummed, twisting in place. She felt his hunger spike, felt the shiver of _want_ that thrilled through him. The thought of three hungry pups, their delight at the fresh meat. And, just like that, she was humming too. _Isolated from her herd. We can take her._

_We can,_ Emily breathed, and took point. Led the way. Two ghosts in the trees hunting a creature who knew herself to be prey. This felt right. Real. Wild. Emily felt her tail wag, stiff and upward, felt Spencer’s stride turn wide and exuberant. _Crack_ went a branch ahead. The wolves veered apart. Emily went right without prompting, without looking at her mate; an integral understanding. They worked as one, their minds locked together tight and intent on a single goal. And they broke from the trees and moved around to the front of the splay-legged ungulate, its swollen sides heaving and nostrils flaring red under white-rimmed eyes as it stared them down.

Emily had never been this close to a creature this size. Young, but rangy. Tall and skinny around the gape of its pregnant gut, the antlers on its head branching out in a threat. Heavy hooves thumped. A tail whisked. The break in the trees stunk of the rank, pungent aroma of terrified beast, the three creatures breathing in unison as they circled.

_Thump_ went a deadly hoof. Spencer darted close, eyes huge and diluted, white fangs bared. He snarled, snapped, darted away. On the right, Emily did the same. Teasing. Mocking. She reared, snapped close to the brown eye of the animal, spinning away gleefully as the scent turned sharp and panicked. _Thump_ went the hoof again, missing her by a mile. They were far too quick. Far too strong.

_Ours,_ Spencer hissed, or possibly she whispered it to him, and they snarled together: _You’re ours._ A promise. Of fangs and biting and the animal’s death. It wouldn’t live to throw down the young it carried, but its death would serve their own pups.

_Lost_ , she realized, as they danced that sally of fear. Intending to drive it out of its mind. To scare it beyond reason. To attack a beast standing its ground felt cowardly, wrong, as though they required the stimulus of its flight to take its life. _I’m lost._ And lost she was. In the hunt, the taste of blood, the knowledge that soon they’d run together. As pack.

Her mate moved with a coyote shriek, a cackle of barks and yips that the beast had never heard before, following it with a slashing snap to the animal’s ankle. _Back!_ she howled, because a single blow by that cloven hoof would split his skull like an overripe melon, but he was already away. And the animal, stunned by this vicious bite, fled.

They chased. They knew this ground. They drove the beast towards the tundra, out from the shelter of the trees. He snapped at its feet like a collie herding sheep, his fur standing on end and making him look manic, starved. And she followed, a black promise of death if the beast veered away from the smaller male. They drove it endlessly, without respite, towards the steep bank by the den that it stumbled on. Stumbled again. He raced up the slope easily, sprinting back and forth and cackling with his coyote call. The creature panicked. Tried to turn. Fell.

They fell with it, onto the exposed chest and belly as it rolled with a mournful, lowing moan. Great jaws made for tearing ripped chunks of flesh away, blood patterning the dawn. The animal wouldn’t die fast; they weren’t numbered enough to kill it quickly. But it _would_ die.

It staggered up, kicked out. They dodged the sluggish move, and followed it with less exuberance as it staggered away. Already dead, just not lying down yet. It left trails of red behind. They trotted together, shoulders brushing and mouths gaping, chests and faces painted with this glory. Until it fell again into a final repose, kicking out helplessly. She went for the throat and ended its misery. It lowed again, the sound rumbling into her clasped jaws, and she felt the pulse of its heart thump once, twice, stop. A shudder worked through her, from the animal and into her and into him next, and burst into a sally of howls they both lost themselves in; a glorious requiem to their fallen.

On four paws and two, they danced together, and she tasted the blood on his mouth and he tasted the same on hers. It was a vicious, sumptuous triumph and it burned in them like nothing else. As the body steamed in the morning cold, they found each other and something they’d lost before, twining tighter and tighter and nipping at each other with bites that were rough at first and then gentle and then rough again as they forgot the purpose of their dance.

She might have knocked him down, bigger than him, more aggressive, and he let himself be thrown underneath her as they tussled. Minds woven together until there was nothing but the wild wolves, she could feel his hunger and her pride and their shared arousal as they played in the reddened snow that clumped around their paws. And there was a heartbeat. A single, frozen heartbeat, where he stopped letting her dominate him and surged up with a nip at her shoulders that sent her hips sinking down, her tail curled, his weight on hers. A poised moment where she wanted and he intended, and she felt him pressing heavy against her. But they paused. Heaved in copper-tanged breaths on the frosty air and struggled to find themselves in the animals they’d become. Or always been, rather, since they were therians whether they walked on two legs or four.

_Come on,_ Emily coaxed, and bumped her hindquarters up against Spencer’s belly. Burning despite the snow around them. They’d never had this, not since that drugged, delirious night at the compound. He loved her, passionately, and he loved his children, and she knew she felt _something_ about him; maybe this was something they could add to this fucked up life they’d carved out of the arctic. Maybe this was okay. Maybe this was what being wild _was_.

But he was silent.

She wiggled around under him and cocked her head back to lick at the matted blood on his throat. Whined as he dropped his head onto hers and heaved in a slow breath that sounded pained.

_Why are you so scared of going home?_ he asked suddenly, and slipped down to curl into the agitated snow next to her. They both stared at the dead caribou, her stomach churning a little at the sight of the savagery with which they’d torn at the animal. As though possessed, and she remembered him howling with the compound pack and gagged. _Every time we talk about it, you go all small and worried and I can’t reach you. Even now we’ve decided to leave, you’re still… conflicted._

**_You_** _hate the idea of going home,_ she snapped, trying to redirect the conversation. Something touched at her mind, a bright, hungry brush of consciousness. The puppies. One of them should go and get them and bring them out here to feed. The calf, in particular, would make a tasty, easy meal for the three pups, without thick fur and skin to gnaw through. Her wayward thought reaching him along with her condemnation, he rose and began worrying at the belly of the beast. Blood spurted around his busy jaws, the steaming guts bursting forth.

_I hate the thought of losing you,_ he said finally, his voice miserable. He paused, looking at her, his ears kinked back and eyes overbright in their mask of red. _You still love him, some part of you._

_I barely remember him,_ she said, not entirely lying. Aaron felt so… far away. _And that’s irrelevant. We can’t raise children in the wild. You’d hate it. You fucking **dream** of reading them books and showing them everything the world has to offer, and we can’t do that here, Spence. You’re half of who you are out here._

_But you’re exactly who you want to be,_ he replied. She winced at the half-truth there. She was exactly who she’d always expected she was going to be, the creature her mom and Sef and even Aaron had warned her against. A wild wolf called nowhere home and no one pack.

_You’re in love with me because of our circumstances,_ she said finally, maybe cruelly. _Because of our brains and our children and everything those cunts did to us. Not because of **me**. And I don’t know how much of what I feel for you is real… I don’t want to pretend._

_It’s real,_ he replied determinedly, leaping back up and pressing close. A thin yipping carried down to them; their pups calling. It carried closer. Riley, probably, bravely leading the way down the slope without fear or care of the world. _What I feel for you is a year removed from those bastards, and it’s **real** , Emily. And you feel the same. You’re just too… small and scared to feel it properly. Determined not to let things change—either staying here and hiding from how we **have** changed, or going home and pretending it never happened. You’re frightened that we’ll look at you and think that you’re less because of how you’ve adapted to our lives now. That we won’t be able to see past what you’ve done to survive._

_I’m not frightened,_ she lied angrily, baring her fangs and leaning away. The pups were slipping down the slope now, stumbling over clumsy paws and legs, and she could hide her expression by watching them instead of his earnest face.

_Yes, you are. Of going home. Of staying. Of changing. Of letting us be **more**._

_I’m not the one who shied away from fucking me,_ she snapped. The pups were stalking stiff-legged around the great body of the caribou, mouths gaping. Never before had their dinner come quite this large, and they alternated from staring at it to shooting questioning glances at their parents. Felicity was bouncing around Spencer’s legs, trying to get his attention. Riley sniffed at a huge hoof bravely, trying to chew on the hock and pulling a face at the unfamiliar taste. _I’m not the one scared of this becoming sexual._

_Sex means nothing to how I feel about us,_ he replied simply, finally turning back to the pups. _It’s the **more** that scares you. This is a caribou, Felicity. Ca-ri-bu. A member of the ungulate family. Riley, don’t eat the hoof, honey. Hooves aren’t for eating. You’ve got a whole caribou there, why start on the feet?_

_Bad,_ Riley decreed, dropping the hock. _Bad yuck._ Emily sighed, a little ashamed of her wry thought that at least one of his genius spawn might not be so… genius.

_Careebow,_ Felicity repeated obediently. _Food?_

_Food,_ Emily agreed, and took over Spencer’s job at tearing the guts of the animal open. Soft, easy to chew flesh for the pups, and only a glimmer of guilt as the slick corpse of the asphyxiated foetus tumbled free. Something dark hovered between her and Spence as they joined their pups in feeding on the hot, bloody flesh. And their journey lay ahead. _Spence?_

_Mm?_ he replied, peering at her from the flank.

_What’s the plan? What… comes next?_

Hazel eyes blinked at her, then turned to the sky. She followed that gaze, squinting at the sun. Bellies full, puppies sated, their one bag packed… _We go south,_ he said. _We go home. And we stop being scared._

_You’re not going to lose me._ No matter what happened, she meant this. She pushed down some churning, painful feeling tied to how she felt about him that wasn’t anything like how she felt about Aaron and maybe it was deeper because of that. But no less realized. _Hey, all you little paws._ The pups looked at her, Spence jolting upright at her sudden forced cheer. _We’re going for an adventure, pups. Shall we say goodbye to our den and Miss Caribou?_

_Oowwoo,_ Riley sent, her mouth silent as her mind worried at the idea of howling. Jaws filled with meat. _Howwoo?_

“Awwo!” howled Felicity, leading the way with gusto. Oliver just frowned thoughtfully. Spencer lifted his head and began to howl, low and throaty. Felicity doubled her efforts to copy her dad. Emily joined in, hearing Riley’s thready _woooo_ following. Oliver coughed out a nervous bark, trying again twice and whining as all he managed were nervous yips.

_It’s okay, Oliver,_ Spence soothed, tugging his son close with a paw and nuzzling his ears. _I never got the hang of howling either._ He looked up at Emily, eyes wicked. _But being frightened of failing doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try._  

Emily shivered with a flush of something hot and cold all at once, and finally closed her eyes and gave in to the song. A song of goodbye. And when it was done, they’d leave this place. 


	21. Nightmare Noon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was nothing like the ground-eating lope her and Spencer had managed with the pups in her belly, or even the racing sprint she’d possessed when she was younger. The pups tired fast and every two hours of travel was broken by a whining _no_ from at least one of them and a bevy of sad eyes and drooping tails from the rest. Emily and Spencer took turns carrying them, especially in places where the snow grew deeper and they couldn’t struggle across without dropping through the icy crust and vanishing with excited squeaks. Felicity, after some coaxing by her father, was persuaded into balancing on his back, paws spread on the coat that had survived the months since its removal from the lighthouse. Smug on her perch high above her siblings and eerily cat-like in her balance, Felicity refused to climb down and the sight of her staring happily around at the passing world became commonplace enough that Spencer began to look weird _without_ the pup between his narrow shoulderblades.

The other two, they carried. Spencer with Oliver—who’d fret if he wasn’t near his sister, just as she’d fret at his absence—and Emily with the kicking, complaining Riley. Riley wanted to walk. Riley did _not_ want to be carried. Emily took to reciting various songs to the child just to keep her quiet, until she ran out of songs and Spencer took over with a weirdly diverse selection of sea shanties.

_Our anchor's aweigh and our sails are all set,_ he sung—badly—on this day, lifting his feet in a high-stepping trot through the thick snow they were pushing through. _Where’s my sailors? I’m not hearing my sailors._

_Bo Rilly,_ Felicity added in her piping voice, the song having become a favourite. Emily groaned. _Bo Rilly!_

_Rilly?_ Oliver asked, looking at his sister. Riley just glowered, dangling once more from her mama’s jaws.

_Bold Riley, oh, boom-a-lay!_ howled Spencer, jauntily swinging his flanks as he went. _The folks we are leaving, we'll never forget;_ _Bold Riley, oh, gone away!_

_Bo Rilly!_ hollered Felicity, yapping with her little mouth turned to the sky above. _Awwwoo Rilly!_

_I hate it here,_ Emily said to no one in particular, folding her ears back against the noise that, unfortunately, was in her head and fucking inescapable. _I wish we were back at the den._

_Oh, boom-a-lay!_ continued Spencer happily.

Endless snowbound forests passed under their already-weary paws; the arctic sun turned slowly around the rim of the sky above. And time passed with them on the road. First one week. Then two. They walked. They sang. Spencer kept up a litany of _one pine tree, two pine trees, three pine trees, how many pine trees now?_ that was strangely comforting. Not that their pups were counting all that well; Oliver never answered, Riley was always adamant that there were only two pine trees in existence in the entire world, and Felicity just kept singing the Bo Riley song. Emily hunted because Spencer wasn’t exactly good at hunting at the dens where he knew the grounds and the wildlife, let alone in the slowly shifting landscapes around them. Even in the warming winter, she kept them fed on hares and mice and sleepy birds—and, once, a fox that Oliver had balked at and declared it a, _Yuck_ _Rilly._ They drank from puddles of icy meltwater, the pups fed on her still-flowing milk, and they kept moving unerringly onwards. Slowly. So fucking slowly.

The pups, exhausting easily, slept constantly. Once they’d managed to rig up the coat and saddlebag so Felicity wouldn’t tumble off her dad’s shoulders, they slept while they walked. It both made the journey easier, and so much harder. Emily was finding that now they had the time to talk, unaccosted by demanding teeth and paws and the chores of keeping a den from falling apart, she didn’t know _how_ to talk anymore. What could they say that they hadn’t both already been there for?

_We have to discuss it you know,_ he said quietly one day, three weeks after leaving the den, as they picked their way across a marshy bog that was more mud than ice as spring settled in. The pups, murky and bedraggled, slept in their jaws, Felicity a fluffy growth tangled in the straps of the saddlebag on his back.

_Discuss what?_ she asked, knowing damn well what he was going to bring up.

_You. You’re struggling._

_I’m fine._ But she wasn’t. When they slept, the nightmares returned. And they were ignorable at first, driven away by a bone-deep fatigue as her muscles protested the steady demand she was placing on them, the painful weeks before their bodies adjusted to constant travelling. Vague whispers of unsettling images, frightening scents. She’d snap awake, check that all her family was accounted for, and then fall asleep once more with Spencer’s flanks moving sedately under her chin. But then their bodies adjusted, no longer dropping into the deep sleep of the truly exhausted.

And then they found the tracks.

_Rabbit,_ Spencer was teaching Riley and Felicity, his voice a distant whisper. He was projecting for her as she hunted, knowing it cut her concentration slightly but feeling it was worth it to reassure her they were okay. _Scent this, my loves. Smell the rabbit?_ Emily smiled, trotting back to them with one of the rabbit’s unfortunate family members hanging limp from her mouth. Oliver showed a complete disdain for tracking or hunting. Which was probably a boon… they already had to have Riley holding Spencer’s tail whenever her four paws were on the ground just to stop her from—

A sharp shock thrummed through her. Surprise. Seconds later, raw fear.

She ran. She knew that fear. And she surged down on top of her family with her hackles up and a snarl already building, right on the shore of the churning river where she’d left them. Upstream slightly, meandering along with the tracks of animals come to drink. The pups wrestled together, a safe distance from the frothy water. Spencer stood hunched at the riverside, his head lowered.  There was no immediate danger. She relaxed and dropped the rabbit to attract the voracious horde’s attention, before joining him on the bank and following his worried eyes.

Across the river. A small pier, built solid. A rope reached across, vanishing behind a spray of overhanging trees to what she was sure would be another pier. Despite being aware that there _were_ settlements out here, few and far between, it was bizarre to see something so…

_Human_ , Spencer sent quietly, padding away. Emily stayed with the pups, well aware of the sticky fear cloying that word. After seventeen months in exile, even more for her, neither of them felt safe around those machine-hewn logs. Felicity choked on a bone, requiring Emily to tear her attention away from Spencer’s exploration. Miserable and spluttering, Emily soothed the coughing pup by taking her on her paws and grooming her thoroughly with a savage tongue, quietly projecting firm feelings of unconditional love down onto her delicate tan daughter. Felicity, unaware that this love wasn’t something that every child was allowed, merely took it as her due and basked happily in it. Even returned a touch of it, in a clumsy puppy trace that Emily savoured nonetheless.

_Emily,_ said Spencer huskily, breaking the moment. Emily looked up, into hazel eyes over a muzzle that was faded with strain, and felt her hackles rise again. Not accompanied by the snarl this time; like a lone wolf facing a foreign pack, she kept silent. _It’s them. I recognise their scents. They’ve been here recently._

_How recently?_ She couldn’t keep the fear from her voice. Couldn’t pull it back.

_Within a week._ His hackles were up too, making him look rangy and dark and frightening, the black ridge of fur almost mane-like.

And just like that, the nightmare returned.

 

* * *

 

Night after night, the room visited her dreams. The doors closed. The snow fell. The glassy black wolf stared down accusingly on her as she cowered below, ass to the floor and almost pissing herself with fear.

Night after night, she woke to Spencer’s paws on her, his muzzle brushing her throat, his thoughts frantic and lined with her pain: _Emily,_ he called her, summoning her out of her traumatised mind, _you’re not there, you’re safe! With me, and the pups, you’re **here**._

_Mama’s here, here!_ the pups added, their own minds shrill as they fed from her anxiety. They didn’t understand it. They knew there was a danger, a terrible room. They sensed the nightmares she couldn’t help but accost them with. But they didn’t know it was distant, a memory. _No Mama, Mama stop!_ And Oliver cried and cried and howled _no_ for fear he’d be taken to that room too.

_I’m fine,_ she said desperately when Spencer voiced concern, pacing to keep herself awake. They’d fled that river, veering sharply north-east to avoid any chance of stumbling across their captors again. It would take them far, far away from their home, from the trail that would lead them back to DC, but Emily was haunted and Spencer was desperate to outrun her nightmares.

But the nightmares followed; they couldn’t escape them.

She tried to stop sleeping but sleep always came. She withdrew from her pack’s minds to shelter them from her, but they barged in and refused to be pushed away. And she ran, at Spencer’s heels with a pup in her mouth, back up into the snowy north. They moved swiftly enough that for a while it was a bizarre reversal of the changing seasons. Heading south, they’d been walking into spring. The snow had melted quickly, leaving marshy bogs to trek through. Going back north-east was running towards a narrow line of mountains that were still snow-capped and frost-bound, the earth under their paws refreezing over once more and game becoming scarce as they re-entered the arctic circle.

_We’re hungry_ , whined the pups as one voice, and every moment she stood still while they suckled was another moment she could imagine the compound wolves sneaking up and the deadly _ka-thunk_ of a dart taking out her first, Spencer next, and then rough hands scooping their pups up and taking them away. _We’re tired,_ was next, but there was no time to rest. They ran like they hadn’t run since the night of the blizzard, and it still wasn’t enough.

_What are you so afraid of?_ he asked her as they paced themselves, night stealing in around them. The mountains loomed closer. A week, she thought it might have been, since that river and their terrible flight. _Emily, they’re moving in the other direction. We’re far away from them—there’s no need to panic._

Puffing out foggy air around Riley’s limp form, Emily lowered her head and kept padding grimly on. Frost crunched under her paws and an owl called overhead, lonely and wild on the wind. She didn’t answer because she didn’t know how.

_We can’t keep this pace up,_ Spencer said finally, letting her evade his previous question. _Your milk will run dry if you don’t feed properly soon, and the pups need time to play and run._

_You’re worried about them playing when we’re running for our lives?_ she snapped, whirling on him. _What? They not **wolves** , Spencer, they’re children and they need to be home where they can **be** children—what good is learning to wrestle and bark then?_

He stared at her, frozen with one paw lifted. In the silver moonlight, that paw glinted white under a muddy sock. _Where did that come from?_ he said, lowering his rump gently as he laid down in the snow without dislodging the sleeping Felicity huddled on his back. _That’s not you, Em. We’ve always been in agreement that we need to raise them normally, to facilitate their inclusion when we do get them home. Play is integral to that—as children **and** as wolves. We don’t stop being therian when we shed our fur._

Emily shivered. She felt sick and tired and stretched as thin as a well-worn sheet left for too long out to the elements. Too threadbare to do more than focus on one goal: escape.

_I’m going to hunt,_ she said instead, laying Riley on Spencer’s paws and bounding into the night before he could shake himself free of daughters and son in time to chase her. In hunting, she could lose herself and all her demons, just for a little while.

She found water as night turned to morning and lapped thirstily at the chilled stream. It ran happily below her tongue, and she watched her reflection ripple and twist in the image displayed to her. A dark-coated wolf with dark, dark eyes. Nothing human in them at all. She wondered what Agent Prentiss of the BAU would have done if faced with those hard eyes over the curling muzzle.

_Wild wolf,_ she imagined Prentiss declaring her. _Not to be trusted._

_We need a profile,_ Hotch replied, pacing around her sedate form on the creek-bed. Emily hunkered lower, hunching her body inward to hide, and closed her eyes. Any kind of escape. _“What kind of a woman is this?_

_“Hardly a girl at all,” said Elizabeth Prentiss, leaning down to run her hands along Emily’s flank. Emily twitched and whined in response, huffing at her mom to **go away, leave me alone.** “Too doggy to be a Prentiss.”_

_“Too monstrous to be a member of my pack,” said Hotch sadly, and turned away._

**_Don’t go,_ ** _Emily begged him._

_“Too human to know who she is.” Sef leaned back against a tree with his floury hands and gentle frown. “There’s really only one place she belongs.”_

**_No_ ** _, said Emily with no real force. They were right._

_“Sorry, love,” said the final voice, and she stood on wobbly legs and turned to find Spencer holding open a familiar door. No handle. A door with no handle. By his side, the pups stood, but pups no longer. Children with dark eyes, all three of them; dark and cold. “You know I’m only doing this because I love you, right? Just like my mother… I wouldn’t trust her with my children, and I don’t trust you. It’s just biology.”_

_Emily walked into the room. The door closed behind her and he smiled before he turned away._

**_I belong here_ ** _, she told the dark wolf in the windowed wall. **It’s okay. I belong here. And they’ll find me eventually, because some part of me calls to them—**_

— _stop it!_

She jerked up. Spencer stared at her, hazel eyes inches from her. _Stop it,_ he cried again, and she shuddered when she realized his mind was in _agony_. Bare inches from sobbing and his eyes were dangerously glassy.

_Wha’?_ she asked groggily, sitting upright and shaking mud from her chin. _Spence, where are the kids?_

_Sleeping._ He was inching closer, hunched up as though in his fright he’d become more cat than wolf. _Nearby. What the fuck was that?_ His mind was laced with fear and anger, a twisting, bubbling mix that burned her to touch.

_Nightmare._ She stood, whimpering as her joints complained about her damp nap in the mud. What she would give to be clean again, to wash the gritty sand and grime from her fur, to bathe the paws that had long blistered and split and healed over as hard, rough skin, to brush her teeth and taste mint and clean instead of carrion and copper… _Shit, I was hunting. I can go again. I’ll go again, I just need to—_

_Emily,_ he whispered, and inched closer. Pressed against her, leaning hard against her body and trembling into her. Helpless in the face of that wordless need, she leaned back and felt a whine twist itself out of her throat. He wound his mind around hers, wrapping tight, until she felt like she was losing herself in the wash of _lovefearlovehungerlovelovelovelove_ he was bathing her in. _That’s not true. It’s not true._

_What isn’t true? Spencer, it was a nightmare. I know it wasn’t true, now let me go, I need to go—_

But he didn’t. _You don’t belong with them,_ he snarled, his hate for them billowing up and out in her mind. His hate for them all wound up with an almost-longing for the acceptance they’d offered him, twisted with his bitter adoration for his brother and the family he knew was still bound there. _You don’t belong with them._ He repeated it and kept repeating it. _You’re not wild, you’re not vicious, you’re **not** theirs. Emily—you’re gorgeous and strong, don’t you see?_

_Stop,_ she asked him, her head aching. He pushed the truth of what he was feeling onto her, bearing her down. For once, refusing to listen to the dominance in her voice. In this moment, she lowered herself to him and let him command her. And he showed her what he knew, a frail spider-web of memories and feelings that were almost impossible for her to discern and yet, somehow, completely understandable. It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t easy. But she listened.

_You’re still this,_ he murmured, following her down and laying half atop her, licking at her ears. And in her mind, he sent a vivid picture: him watching her from the kitchen door as she spilled spaghetti sauced down her front and laughed instead of shouting, flicking it at him in a playful prompt to _join in_. An easy smile, human and alive and happy.

_You’re still you_.

Walking into a shapeless building at her back, she was the only vivid thing in his view. And he felt so, so safe with her at his front, and she looked stronger and more powerful to his eye in that moment than she’d ever looked when staring into the mirror.

_See? You’re exhibiting learned helplessness—your capture was so extended, so… dehumanizing… to protect itself, your mind has adapted to aversive or painful stimuli rather than repeatedly trying and failing to escape the situation. It’s…_ He paused, and the image changed again. Running through the woods with her, giddy with friendship. Green woods in the brisk air of home. In the distance, wolves howled joyously because spring was there and they were loved. But the whole image was melancholy, laced with shock and dismay. _Emily,_ he mewled, his voice turning thin, and the image shattered. Leaving behind a black wolf curled on a cement floor, forelegs bloodied and swollen sides heaving. Foam laced its mouth, panic burned in its eyes, and Emily gasped because its pain was so _vivid_ she hurt with it. _I did this,_ he said blankly, and withdrew from her. So suddenly that she was left cold, panting on the bank. _I did this to you._

_Spencer, no_ , she breathed, struggling up. In the distance, wolves still howled, and they both turned momentarily to try and ascertain if they were approaching or moving away.

_I left you there._ He backed away from her, paws skittering in the mud. The wolves howled again, coquettishly. Werewolf, but far away and unfamiliar.

_You did what you had to._

He turned enough that he could only watch her with one white-ringed hazel eye, staring and frightened. _You don’t know what you feel like right now,_ he said with a groan that sounded like it tore deep from his chest. _You’re so frightened and small; they took you, Emily, and they made you small. And I didn’t think that was possible for anyone to do. You could **never** be small to me._

The wolves howled again. They shivered. The voices weren’t approaching, but Emily could hear them clearly enough now that she knew what they were announcing. Spring was here, but neither of the mud-covered wolves on that bank welcomed it. The strain of nursing would keep the season from visiting them. Their minds remained clear.

_Mating will distract them from hunting us,_ she said briskly, trying to turn away from his guilt and her hurts.

_They’re not hunting us,_ he replied. Blunt and pensive. _They haven’t been hunting us for months, Emily. We’re free and you know it._

_That doesn’t mean we stop running!_ she snarled, whirling on him with her fur on end. _They could cross our tracks, realize we’re still out here, come looking—_

He cut her off, rudely. His mind tortured but his tone determined. _I can’t atone for what I did to you,_ he told her, and finally stopped backing away. She saw the shift on his posture, from scared to sure, and he moved back towards her and rested his jaw on her shoulder, breathing in her scent. After a tense few moments, she relaxed into his touch, and listened. _I can’t make up for the room, or the compound, or leaving you there… There is nothing in this world that will give me penance for those cruelties. But I swear, I’m not going to rest until you believe me: you do not belong with those **mutts** at the compound. You belong with me and our children, you belong with **Aaron**. You’re not small and you’re not broken and you’ll never be caged again. I won’t allow it. I’ll die before I let you be caged again._

She looked at him, stunned by the surety of his words. _It wasn’t your fault,_ she said, but that didn’t work because some small part of her _did_ still blame him for leaving her alone, and likely always would. So she tried, _I’m not your responsibility._

_You are,_ he said quietly. And sent one last memory, this one bright and sharply defined. Well remembered, cherished. He was human with the charcoal drawing in his hands, and she was a wolf and looking down at it. They were in their den. The first den. The pups were barely conscious, three little potato beings who only thought of food and sleep and love.

“I can’t do it,” he’d said, so softly she’d been glad of her canine ears. “I can’t watch you with our children and hide it from you.”

_I’ve known for months,_ she’d replied.

The sun had been rising outside, the end of their first winter as a family. A single beam laid a line across her tail. He stared at it as he said, “If I admit to loving you, could you still accept me?” and, this time, in his version of the memory, she could see how the sun caught her fur and brought it to life, how beautiful and strong and infinite she’d looked in that moment. And she knew how his heart hadn’t beat properly, how his breath had caught, and how scared he’d been of her rejection.

_Always,_ she’d said, and stepped out of the sun and into the shadows by his side. The puppies had squeaked. She’d brushed his face with her muzzle and his cheek had been cold and damp. _Always,_ she’d repeated, and he was a wolf against her and shaking because he hadn’t expected acceptance.

_You’ll always be my responsibility,_ he said now, and stole the memory back to greedily hoard to himself. _But you’re your own wolf, Emily Prentiss. No slave to the compound or your mother or biology or to me._

_What does this mean?_ she asked him, sensing the pups waking nearby and their voracious hunger. She felt thin and weak, and knew she’d have to eat before she could feed them. They’d have to hunt. But that would mean staying still, with the wolves behind them… _What do we do now?_

His eyes watched her warily, his heartbeat strong in his chest as he breathed slowly. _We can keep running,_ he said carefully, making sure to veil his thoughts from her for this moment. _If you need that to stop this spiral you’re trapped in. Or…_

_Or?_

_We can stop. Find a den and settle the pups in and we can… hunt._ He paused on the word ‘hunt’ and she twitched her nose and scented lilac on the breeze. A hated scent. She hated the flower. Doyle had loved them; he’d loved the spring and they were the first flower to bloom at winter’s end. _We’re hungry, we’re exhausted. We can keep heading north-east after a few days’ rest, but we need to recuperate first. But you have to trust me, Em—if we stay, I will protect you. I wouldn’t offer this if it wasn’t safe. And I can’t help you if you won’t let me, if you don’t stop holding me at arm’s length. I gave myself to you, that morning in the first den. You accepted me then, but not completely, and it’s crippling us now because you’re trying to run from what we could stop and face together._

She hated this, that he was talking to her like a victim. Like she was in need of help, of being cossetted, of…

But he wasn’t wrong. She _did_ need help.

_Always_ , she’d said back then, but then she’d placed conditions on his love. Always, but not too completely because she wasn’t sure it was real. Always, but not when alone because, really, he only loved her because of the pups. Always, but she’d never returned it because some part of her had broken back in that room and she’d worried it was the part of her that knew how to love him in return.

Always, but only with the thought of Aaron hanging over them like a knife edged with sharp betrayal. But it had been over two years since she’d seen him last. He probably thought them both dead, nothing but desiccated bones in the bottom of a mass-grave somewhere hidden. He’d have long grieved and moved on, maybe found a new mate. Added her to the dark part of his mind where he kept Haley and everyone else in his life he’d loved and lost. And she wouldn’t begrudge him finding love in another’s arms in the time they’d been gone, just as he wouldn’t hold this against her.

_Do I love you?_ she thought privately, looking at Spencer and thinking of his patience with the pups, his steadfast loyalty once they’d been out of the compound, his optimism, his determination to return home no matter what that meant for his heart. Kindness and tenderness and his body tucked against hers in the darkest hours of the endless winter nights.

She thought of all these and more and her heart thumped and _hurt_. A bone-deep ache that stabbed and prickled and refused to let her ignore it.

Love, she decided, was made of hurting. And she _did_ hurt for him. Just as she’d die for him. Just as she’d carry him if he fell, or as she’d follow him without pause wherever he chose to lead her. Absolute trust.

Her turn to prove that.

_Hunt with me,_ she breathed, and let a little bit of that hurting warmth out to brush against his mind. He shivered. He returned it.

_Yes,_ he said. They found a den. The pups complained, but were dutifully tucked inside. Even Riley, they knew, would stay here—the unfamiliarity of the outside world kept her timid. And the two wolves, still who they’d always been but somehow now more on top of that, moved together out into the morning to find something they’d been running from. Under the weak spring sun, they found in succession: the tracks of an injured doe; the doe herself; a release from the fear of the past few weeks in the form of a hunt; and then they found each other. The season didn’t move them as he moved inside her. They kept their minds. It was entirely their decision, and she gloried in the freedom of it.

It both was and wasn’t a first, and Emily knew to cherish it in case it turned out to also be a last.


	22. Farewell Felicitations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something changed between them after that hunt. Some feeling that was centred in her and echoed in him, that so long as he could hold her close without fear or reservation, so long as he could give himself so utterly to her heart, she could fight the parts of her brain that whispered and worried and threw nightmares out relentlessly, even two weeks after that dreamlike coupling.

_I love you_ , he told her when she shuddered awake from a dream that didn’t haunt her. He nudged closer in the tight little den they’d made to sleep out a late season snowstorm in. It was half encompassed by a rotted hollow of a tree that had tried and failed to grow on this frozen tundra, damp and leafy and smelling strongly of rot. But with the two big wolves mushed together in a puddle of tan and black and the pups squeezed warmly between them—Riley pretending she wasn’t trying to chew on the coat they’d covered them with—they were safe from the wet wind-chill outside.

She nudged him back and returned his affection with another touch of the warm hurting feeling, the giddy _thump_ of her heart when she felt him loving her. Pleased, he nuzzled back down and they watched the snow flurry silently around them.

_Bored bored bored,_ chanted Riley in feeling rather than words, poking around with her oversized paws and taking out her frustrations by nipping her smaller siblings. Within seconds, there was a battle of angry squeaking and fighting as Felicity objected to Oliver being bitten. Not for the first time, Emily regretted that every abode they found now lacked the room to have separate naughty corners to shove irritating puppies into.

_Shh, you gaggle of noises,_ she scolded them, nudging and poking them away from each other. _Quiet. You’ll wake the snow._

Four pairs of eyes turned to her, all curious.

_Snow sleep?_ Felicity asked, wiggling up until she was standing on her dad and putting her paws on the exit of the tree to peer out at the white world looming. Her mind was sharp, quick-fire fast, and Emily shivered at how _Spencer_ it felt. Two steps ahead with the distance between them ready to increase at any moment. If the other pups were similar, it was muted. _No?_ But she inflected it like a question, staring suspiciously at a flake as it tried to land on her little pink nose.

_I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently_? Spencer said suddenly, rolling onto his back so Felicity tumbled down with a whine into his belly fluff. _And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”_ He paused, now the one they were all staring at. _Alice in Wonderland. Mom used to read it to me and Ethan… it was his favourite. I preferred… more classic texts._

_Keep going?_ Emily asked, inching closer despite there being no room _to_ inch. _I miss reading._

He continued. And continued and continued, until she fell asleep with his voice whispering, _It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then,_ in her mind and the snow outside turning to an icy rain that blasted against their shelter.

They moved slowly, turning in a gradual loop back south as the panic of the previous month faded. Every time a howl drifted on the wind and Emily tensed, Spencer was there. _It’s not them,_ he promised her. _They’re not coming_. And away from the tundras they trudged, their paws cut and bleeding on the icy grounds and the puppies growing evermore on meals of snowshoe hares and ptarmigans, the unequivocal favourite of their hungry family.

_It’s not them,_ Emily repeated as the howls faded away, to be replaced by the throatier howls of real wolf packs, and she even began to almost believe it. _We’re free._

Leaving their pups to lap at a stream on a rocky hillside, Emily slipped over the ridge to peer down at the distant promise of forest spotting the land ahead. Forest meant easy game, plentiful shelter, something _familiar_. To say she was excited was an understatement.

And then Oliver screamed. In their minds and out loud too, shrieking with raw fear that grew louder as he pelted towards them. Felicity trailed behind, screeching for help—the _keee-yip_ call of a child desperate for attention, and no part of Emily could ignore that. She turned on a dime and hurtled towards her babies, already bristling and snarling at the threat. Spencer, always faster, beat her there, and the ridge was suddenly alive with roaring barks and an unearthly gurgling yowl.

Sprinting past the two huddled, still-crying twins—both of whom chattered _Mama, Mama!_ when they saw her pass—she leapt the ridge and burst down with a ferocious roar on Spencer and his foe, Riley bouncing around his paws and adding her voice to the mix.

The spotted cat with the tufted ears that had, quite literally, tripped over their pups arched and hissed, slashing out with a great paw at Spencer’s muzzle. He sneered and danced around that paw, tan rump wiggling as he used his greater size to warn the lynx away, almost mocking with his grunting growls. Riley joined him. _Bad wolf,_ she declared, rearing onto her hind legs and copying Spencer’s curled muzzle. _Bad, yuck wolf!_

_Riley, get away!_ Emily ordered her, bounding down there and grabbing their too-brave pup by her black scruff and hauling her back up the slope to her siblings. _You don’t run **towards** the things that will eat you!_

_Rilly eat yuck wolf,_ Riley protested, trying to tug herself out of Emily’s grip and almost succeeding as her paws caught on the rocky slope. Lanky and awkward, she was the size and weight of a human toddler her own age, and Emily paused with a thrill of surprise as she realized they wouldn’t be able to carry them much longer. The time had come for their pups to walk on their own four paws.

The time would soon come that they’d walk on two.

Emily sat heavily, letting go of Riley and shivering as the full implications of that hit home. They’d have toddlers, three of them, shifting freely in the wilds. Naked toddlers, that they wouldn’t be able to communicate with to tell them to stay as wolves to avoid exposure. How could they speak to them? How could they _teach_ them? The collar around her throat felt tighter than ever, heavy enough to drag her down towards the ground, her legs numb and tingling.

_Emily?_ Spencer appeared, frowning at Riley and scuffing her behind the ear with a paw. _That was a lynx, Riley. And you two—a lynx. A type of wild cat, not a wolf. We’re wolves, they’re cats. And we do **not** pick fights with cats, do we? She would have eaten you without compunction. Emily, what’s wrong?_

_They’re growing up,_ Emily replied dizzily. No real fear from the lynx remained. A shock, to be certain, but a lynx was no real threat to a well-guarded family. _They’ll learn to shift soon._

Spencer looked at the pups, sulking together because one being scolded may as well be all of them. _We’ll deal with it as it comes,_ he said finally, and nudged her up. _Come on. I think lady lynx may have a fiendishly naughty family of her own nearby. I don’t fancy Riley attempting to see if she’s a big enough wolf to battle a kitten. Also, the ranges of lynxes of opposite sex tend to overlap quite extensively despite the cat’s solitary nature, and Papa Lynx may be considerably larger than her due to sexual dimorphism—_

He kept chattering on, herding their pups with sweeps of his paws and instructing Riley—a recent addition to their ‘keeping the pups in one place’ plan—to hang onto his tail as they trotted down the slope. Felicity and Oliver, delighted by the fun of the duckling style walk, attempted to grab each other’s tails and promptly fell down the slope with twin _yips_ of fear.

Barely holding back a giggle that was shrill with her fading misery now they were moving again, Emily retrieved them, giving Felicity her own tail to hold onto, Oliver grabbing Felicity. For now, the novelty of it kept their puppies close.

For now.

 

* * *

 

They found bear tracks, a large male grizzly, and Emily made it about two seconds into Spencer’s cheerful, _in spring, grizzly bears can often be found on the tundra_ , before determinedly turning their course back to the forest. They’d always been heading there. After that, they just started heading there _faster_.

_Bears aren’t so frightening,_ Spencer teased, at the slow run that was all their three panting pups could manage for short bursts, goading them on with teasing leaps forward. _We can outrun them._

_Can we?_ Emily asked curiously, looking down at their pups. Spencer looked too.

_No,_ he admitted after a beat. _We can max out at about forty miles per hour. Grizzlies at thirty-seven. The pups… probably about twenty-five, and they’d drop quickly._

She ran faster.

The world shifted around them. Spring returned, bringing bursts of wildflowers as the snow vanished on the slopes and trees began to pop out of the rocky barrens. They crossed through a boggy marsh, into a scruffy scrubland splashed with orange and finally, _finally_ , slipped into the bright undergrowth of a thinly wooded boreal forest. They slept in the open that night, enjoying the brisk snap of mid-spring air, and she looked up at the starry sky above.

_How long_? she asked the moon softly, glad that Spencer wasn’t actually awake to answer her. Sprawled by his side, the pups were one long black line—Riley—and two huddled balls of butter-tan, twined together. Sleeping comfortably.

Emily looked at them and thought of Jack and JJ and the same moon looking down on DC.

Days later, Spencer got into a scuffle with a lone male wolf—the first they’d come into close contact with—over the body of a deer. He won, of course, easily overpowering the smaller mundane animal. They thought very little of it as the wolf flickered away into the deeper woods like a shadow.

After that, they were followed.

When they hunted, wolves skittered close with their heads low and their eyes dark. Spencer chased them off, tail high and teeth bared and scent aggressively therian. Emily hovered close to the curious pups, the more intimidating of the two and not entirely unconvinced the winter-skinny wolves weren’t planning on snatching a tender pup to snack on.

But that didn’t seem to be their plan. When six wolves converged on Spencer while he dug at a rabbit’s burrow, he abandoned the bunny to them. The next time they pulled a deer down, the wolves were waiting. Bolstered by their success, they sneered and snarled and crept closer and closer until Emily could have reached out a paw to smack them on their noses. Which she did, and slashed at their muzzles with her own furious jaws, heart thudding. All male, all young or close enough to it, they weren’t a settled pack defending their territory.

_Displaced males,_ Spencer explained, his hazel eyes wary. _They’re not starving. And we don’t pose threats to mates or territory, they don’t have either._

_So, what are they doing?_ Emily asked as the night came alive with mocking howls. Oliver whined with fear, hiding under Spencer’s belly and peering out. Felicity hovered between hiding and facing the noisy darkness, one eye on her dad for a cue on how to behave. Riley tried to howl back, earning a cuff from Emily’s paw as she quickly dragged her daughter close and planted her paw on the child’s tail to stop her running away to fight the _‘bad cats’_ , as all disagreeable creatures had now been termed.

_I don’t know,_ Spencer admitted. _But they’ll likely move on soon._

They didn’t.

Hunting grew hard. If small prey required a chase, Emily would find herself suddenly circled by silent wolves with their hackles up. Cut off from her family. They never approached close enough for her to attack them, but they clustered between her and Spencer until he called out curiously to find where she was. If she told him what was happening, he was left torn between staying with their pups to protect them and the furious terror of having his mate being surrounded by unfamiliar, aggressive wolves. By the fourth time this happened, she was forced to give up on regular hunts—he was starting to twitch from the strain of it, his scent taking on the acrid bite of continued stress and turning sharp and overtly masculine as his body compensated by flooding him with testosterone. It didn’t make for a cheerful Spencer, and he brooded and snapped and snarled at the wolves and at her, but never at the pups.

Larger prey was impossible. It needed them both, and they couldn’t leave the pups. Too big to be carried easily now, still small enough that a solitary wolf posed a terrible threat.

_What if we split the pups between us?_ Spencer suggested suddenly one day, wearily growling at a wolf trotting ahead of them with his tail high to show off his assets to her more quietly male mate. An open challenge, the creature seemingly unsure of how to react to a therian wolf. Emily rolled her eyes at the canid display of masculine stupidity, and wished she was closer enough to _bite_. See how he flaunted with her teeth-marks laid across them. _One of us takes Riley—she’s sharp enough at tracking to help—and flushes the small game towards the other._

_That could work,_ Emily admitted after a fleeting moment of thinking. The next day, they tried it. Overwhelmed with the _excitement_ of being allowed to help, Riley chased the rabbit in entirely the wrong direction and they went hungry again. The next day, they found marmots and spent most of the hunting time trying to convince Oliver that he wouldn’t be eaten by the tenacious animals, the rest of it digging Riley out of the marmot hole she’d squeezed into and couldn’t get out of.

The third day, they finally managed to herd a hare right into Spencer’s waiting jaws, although Felicity and Oliver seemed entirely unconvinced of the fun of hunting. But after that, they ate. Not enough and their bellies seemed to permanently rumble, but enough that they didn’t lose too much condition. Emily kept her milk and was thankful, since a marmot was barely a mouthful to her and there was Spencer to think of as well, who’d happily let himself starve if he thought they needed it more.

The weather heated and so did their tempers. After a week of no sightings of the wolves, Emily startled awake one night to a greying muzzle sneaking closer to Riley’s sprawled out paws as the pup slept.

If she’d caught it before it fled into the inky darkness, she would have killed it. Absolutely. The sight of those teeth near her daughter were something she wouldn’t soon forget. The next night, she stayed awake until she thought it was safe and then drifted off. Fortunately, it was Oliver who woke in the middle of the night—he never drifted far from them to piss, so he was still in sight when the wolf darted out of the foliage nearby and nipped at his flank. Oliver screamed and hurtled to Spencer’s side, and Emily chased the wolf down and almost killed it right there, until suddenly she was surrounded by more wolves than she’d seen before and forced back. At least ten, possibly more, and she relayed this to Spencer grimly as they licked at the bruised mark on Oliver’s rump and soothed him together.

The wolves seemed to take this as a hint that they could get closer. And they did.

_We have to do something about them,_ Emily snarled, whirling around to nip at Felicity to hurry her up as a brindled male trotted out behind them and circled behind. _The kids are terrified, Spencer._

_Bad wolf,_ Felicity agreed, tail between her legs and eyes staring at the wolves. Since Oliver’s run-in, the girls had been vicious in their dislike of the wolves, relaying enough distaste towards them that Emily almost missed the days where all they hated was goat. _Bad bad, dumb, smelly wolf!_

_Cat,_ hissed Riley, ears back tight against her skull and hackles up, the worst possible insult.

Oliver was silent, with only a soft, _no Daddy,_ as he huddled tight to Spencer’s legs.

This visible show of fear from the pups seemed to spark something in Spencer. He’d borne this siege quietly, only chasing the wolves off when they veered too close, tolerating their more rakish behaviour. But the wolves had _dared_ to touch one of his children, their fear was hot and vivid, and Emily felt his mind shift abruptly towards raw anger. A large grey wolf slunk closer, sneering at Riley who sneered right back. Emily growled. Spencer was silent. The grey stepped closer and snarled. Glanced at Spencer—a clear challenge—and then inched closer yet.

It stepped between Spencer and Emily, eyes still on Spencer. Clever in its own fashion, it seemed completely puzzled as to why the therian was allowing it so close to his mate and pups. Emily, wary of what Spencer was doing, made sure the pups were close and continued walking. And Spencer was silent.

The grey seemed to give up on Spencer, turning its back on him with a grunting chuff of curiosity, moving closer to Emily. Its scent was harsh, animalistic and rough, and there was something in the way it walked that she baulked at.

And then Oliver shrieked. The same unhappy squall he’d voiced at the lynx, this time aimed at the big wolf walking towards his mama. Too timid to do what Riley was doing, marching fearlessly with her little chest puffed out, and too brave to hide completely, he was half out from between Spencer’s paws with his eyes huge with fear and his tiny fangs bared.

_Mama, no!_ he wept with a miserable howl, and began to cry. The wolf, completely flummoxed by the tears that it _couldn’t_ physically shed, turned and stared at the pup.

Spencer, given an opening, attacked without warning.

The wolf screamed as it fell under a singularly intent assault. Spencer had been trained by Aaron on how to take down human or therian opponent, and this wolf didn’t stand a chance. They hit the ground, Spencer using his greater weight to his advantage, and then struck with daggerlike precision for the carotid that pulsed under the thickly ruffed throat.

The wolf died with a gurgle and the pack around them exploded.

_You probably shouldn’t have done that,_ Emily said, stunned, as the wolves burst out of the woods around them and began to circle furiously. Spencer, as though deaf to her, leapt up from the dead wolf and advanced on them, hackles up and back stiff, his own tail high. Outnumbered or not, there was a mad gleam to his eye that would have stalled _her_ , and the smaller wolves paused despite their anger at their loss. _Spencer. **Spencer!**_

He twitched and looked at her. His mind churning with a primal fury that goaded him on, hiding the gentler parts of himself in a tumult of _remove the threat._

_We can’t fight them all,_ she told him, despite her own body and mind beginning to respond to the hate in his and flooding her with adrenaline. _The pups. We can’t fight and protect the pups. And if we get hurt or killed, they starve._

He stared at her for a long moment, sides heaving and jaws foamy-red. _Yes,_ he said distantly, dancing back towards her on wary paws. _Yes… we should… yeah. Follow me. Run!_ He charged at the thinnest part of the gathered wolves, scattering them easily. Emily followed, the pups between them. And they broke the line of assailants and hurtled deeper into the woods with the pups keeping pace, fear pushing them onwards as the wolves howled behind them.

Emily went cold at the sound of those howls. Those howls she knew. They were the same whether voiced by therian or mundane wolf…

_They’re hunting us,_ she told Spencer.

_Don’t stop running,_ he replied, _we can lose them._

They couldn’t.

 

* * *

 

They found a den, a narrow crevice in a rocky slide that the five of them huddled in. But the wolves knew they were there, and they weren’t unused to waiting their prey out. Emily had heard of hunts that had lasted days of trailing a wounded prey, waiting for it to tire and die, and it was eerie to suddenly be the one being waited out.

_How long will they sit out there?_ she asked Spencer desperately, and he didn’t answer. Just pressed close to the entrance, his eyes locked outward and scent sour with fright.

And the hours ground on. The pups were hungry. They began to cry. The wolves, as though mocking them, began to howl outside, a teasing cacophony of noise. This alarmed the pups even more, even Riley giving in and whimpering in a huddle of terrified black fur on the sandy floor of the crevice. It wasn’t wide enough for comfort, Emily’s sides uncomfortably crushed, but she still oozed as far back as she could and lay down so the pups could snuggle to her for comfort.

_Sing to them,_ Spencer said suddenly, his voice husky and overloud in the tense quiet that had built between them. Every hair on her body stood on end at the worry in his voice. _It might drown that out._ She did. She started with nursery rhymes, children’s poems. Anything she could remember, in any language. Then she slipped to pop songs from the radio that were catchy enough she still remembered them now. The mangled lines of some classic rock songs. Hummed beats of music she couldn’t quite remember but thought maybe Dave had shown her. And then she did them all again, because dawn was breaking and they’d been here hours and the wolves outside still waited.

The pups slept. Emily and Spencer didn’t.

_If we run, they’ll pull us down,_ Spencer said, and she didn’t answer.

_If we stay here, we’ll starve,_ he said, hours later, and her stomach growled, the pups whining along.

_If we fight, they’ll win,_ he whispered as the sun began to drop again, and this time she couldn’t possibly answer.

The next day dawned. The pups were loud and fierce. _Food,_ they demanded, so she nursed until they were content. Her own stomach twisted painfully. Her mouth was dry. Her head ached, her eyes raw and gritty. From his steady stance by the entrance, Spencer swayed. The air turned thick and humid, cloying, and only served to remind them how desperately, painfully, frighteningly thirsty they were.

And outside, the wolves howled. _Woooooawooo_ , they sang, and the sky began to answer. Deep claps of thunder. The heat pushed in. _Boom_ warned the sky, the wolves outside becoming shapeless forms that flickered in and out of the grey-green forests. And the night fell again, heavy and gross and sticky. Emily felt dizzy. She felt sick. She wanted sleep.

Oliver was still crying, so she sang until even her mind-voice was cracked and slurring, drying up despite not using a physical voice to communicate. The pups’ nursing began to hurt, her milk tinged pink. The pups began to bicker, fighting over the limited food, and never seemed sated no matter how long they pulled at her.

_Bo Rilly,_ sang Felicity sadly, her voice morose. _Ooooowooo, Bo Rilly!_

The others ignored her.

_Spence, we have to move soon,_ Emily said as the third morning began to rise. The humidity was deathly now. The thunder barked once, impossibly close, as though the very sky was cracking with the tension. Oliver and Riley both screamed at the sound, pressing as far into the back of the cave as possible until all Emily could see of them in the gloom was Oliver’s bright fur and a flash of Riley’s white teeth as she bayed her fear. _We’ll die of thirst._

He looked back at her, illuminated by a drab sun. His tongue lolled from his mouth, gums white and nose cracked and dry. A thin crust was gathering by the corners of his jaws; she knew hers bore the same. And the same staring eyes, the same exhausted droop. Dehydration would kill them as surely as the wolves would.

_We can’t carry them all,_ he said finally, and Emily almost cried out with the horror of that sentence. The pups.

They couldn’t outrun the wolves. They weren’t big enough.

They couldn’t be carried. There weren’t enough jaws.

One would have to run. Through the thunder and the slashing fangs.

They couldn’t.

_We can’t_ , she moaned, and sunk back down. Spencer nodded grimly. He kept watching. The thunder boomed again. So close now.

And their thirst grew. They could all smell rain. Emily felt mad with the stink of it. She found herself on her feet, drifting towards the opening. Spencer was already halfway out, his face tipped to the sky and jaws gaping.

_Daddy!_ Felicity howled, voice sharp and shocking.

_Mama, no!_ scolded Riley, nipping at Emily’s paws. _Bad cat!_

The two wolves jolted, startling back into the cave right as a wolf veered close and snapped at Spencer’s retreating muzzle.

_We’re dying,_ Emily told the taunting sky as swollen black clouds held back the rain that might save their lives. _We’re dying, Spence._

And he didn’t answer.

_Hungry,_ whispered Felicity, licking Oliver’s ears. Emily looked at them, her wonderful, clever babies. They didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve to die in a cave instead of growing proud and strong at home. Instead of becoming the pack’s pride, cosseted and loved by every wolf who called them family. _Food now, Mama? Please?_

_The storm,_ Spencer answer dully, right as it broke with a tremendous crash. Rain bucketed down, smashing into the ground in a torrent. It only took a heartbeat for water to begin cascading into their narrow shelter, and for the two adult wolves to greedily choke down as much as they could. Emily drunk stupidly until her stomach wound itself into a ball and she hurled it back up with a cry of pain. Spencer did the same.

And still the rain came.

_No,_ Riley told the water furiously, already up to her belly. Emily whirled and found the cave filling. The ground under them was rock under a thin sandy coating, tilted into a downward slope. Her heart thumped twice and stalled for a second; she turned back to Spencer who didn’t look surprised.

_You knew,_ she accused him. _You knew this cave would flood!_

_Water or the wolves,_ he said. _I was trying to think of another way._

_And did you?_ She tried not to sound accusatory, but the fear was real now and the water was rising. Riley scrabbled up onto a higher rock. Emily grabbed Felicity, pushing her towards her dad. Oliver, she picked up herself, holding him up above the water level as he dripped sadly, his paws and tail tucked close to his belly.

_No._

And there it was. Out of options. They had, at most, she guessed a few hours before they’d be pushed right against the narrow doorway to avoid being sunk, and then they’d be standing under a veritable torrent from above. The water they’d longed for had come to destroy them.

_We have to run,_ she said, pushing Oliver towards Spencer so she could reach back and grab Riley by her soggy scruff. _How?_

_The storm may cover our tracks,_ he replied. They were both thinking of a blizzard, and a previous flight. _It’s getting dark. If we wait for twilight, they’ll be blind. I’ll shift and carry the twins—I don’t think they’ll risk a large target in the dark, especially not if they’re expecting a wolf and find themselves faced with a biped instead. You take Riley and **run**. Don’t stop. _ His _don’t stop_ was desperate. He pushed close to her, nudging his muzzle as close to hers as he could get without putting Oliver down. _Get Riley out and then… do what you have to. Emily, look at me._ She did. He stared at her and didn’t let her look away, his gaze intense and all-encompassing. She felt like she was poised on the edge of a precipice, with only his eyes tethering her to the unsteady ground. _No matter what happens, we get the pups out. They come first. Always._

She swallowed. They didn’t have a choice. _Boom_ howled the sky, drawing it out long and low.

_Okay,_ she whispered. _But don’t fall. Don’t you dare fall or drop them or… **anything** , Spencer Reid. I refuse to be mauled like a dog saving your ass._

He nodded. He shifted in a heartbeat, his expression turning vacant and confused as he tried to reorientate himself in a body he was unused to. The pups barked with surprise, so rarely seeing him human, skittering away, but he caught them with hands that were clumsy and weak and almost dropped them right there. They fought him.

_Stop,_ Emily commanded the twins. Riley was silent and shocked in her jaws. _It’s your dad, guys. Scent him. Snuff! He’s just the same—and you need to be **quiet!**_

They snuffed and settled. Felicity first, because she always, _always_ , trusted Spencer in everything he did. _Daddy!_ she said happily, and nestled against the strap of the single saddle bag wrapped uncomfortably around his bare chest. She licked him, tail and butt wiggling happily. Oliver calmed at his sister’s acquiesce.

“Here we go,” croaked Spencer in a voice that was _fucked_ from disuse. He looked at Emily who couldn’t stop looking at him, his human appearance so bizarre after so long seeing him as a wolf. “I love you.”

Oh. Oh, that was cruel.

He couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t feel her heart stammer, or the hurting pain that bubbled up worse than ever. _Booom_ barked the sky one last time, and Emily said softly, _I love you too._

He ran first into the stormy night, and she followed. Overtaking him far too fast, every instinct screaming at her to _go back to him, stay by his side,_ but the forest loomed ahead like an uncertain kind of safety, and the wolves seemed to be hiding from the torrential rain. Three bounds ahead of his rangy figure and he was hidden from her. Another and she couldn’t see the slope they’d hidden in. Like it was laughing at her, the rain kicked up into a squall that blasted her eyes.

The wolves came.

They surged around her and she almost dropped Riley as she instinctively tried to roar at them to get away. But then they surged past, and her momentarily relief was shattered by a scream. Not a pup scream.

Spencer’s.

She felt them grab him. She felt teeth in her forelegs as the jaws found his arms, she felt the ground smash into her knees as he toppled forward with his body bowed over his children protectively. She felt a fang puncture her cheek as they dragged him to the ground by his face. The twins screamed because Spencer was gripping them so tightly it was hurting. Riley was screaming too, muted by the storm.

And then he shifted and screamed too; not muted at all as he fought for his life and the lives of his children.

Emily hesitated. Fear throbbed at her from every angle, pulling her apart. Riley’s and Felicity’s and Oliver’s and Spencer’s and her own and she didn’t know whether to run, to attack, or to stand her ground and roar at the buckling sky.

_Emily!_ Spencer cried, and then, _No!_ and she felt the twins’ fear skyrocket together and pain from both of them and raw, agonising fear.

_Mama!_ cried one, and another shrilled for _Daddy!_

Emily made her choice. She turned her back on them. And she ran. The wolves didn’t follow; she was hidden by the storm that soaked her coat and dragged her down and almost swept Riley off her paws when Emily dropped her on the edge of the clearing and did the damn hardest thing she’d ever done.

_Run,_ she told her. _Run!_ she roared, but Riley whined, _no, Mama,_ and tried to follow her. Emily grabbed her again, rougher this time, throwing her into the trees and knowing she’d never forget the yelp of pain Riley made as she hit the ground hard.

Emily left her and went back. The whole exchange only took a moment, as she turned and rocketed through the rain and the wind to where she could feel Spencer’s heart still beating. A wolf howled gleefully. Emily ran and Emily roared and then Emily stood her ground as three wolves listed at her and tried to drag her down. So long as she didn’t fall, she’d live. She was a wolf. She’d hunted like a wolf, killed like a wolf. When the prey fell, it died.

She refused to fall as fangs tore at her shoulders and the thick fur of her throat. Spencer screamed her name, realizing she was bleeding and _there—_ a shrill, _Emily, no! —_ but they were both distracted by a starburst of pain and a brief, confused feeling of _why_?

Everything slowed. The wolves retreated, watching her with wary eyes. She steadied her paws, breathed, and reached for that _why?_ right as it sighed and flickered out. A soft presence simply not there anymore, like a candle knocked over by a clumsy breeze.

She staggered.

Choked.

Touched for it and found it gone; an empty space that couldn’t possibly be empty.

The storm quietened, as though shocked alongside her. Wolves seethed around the place where Spencer had dropped. She stared blankly at them, rain in her eyes and thin voices calling out to her in her mind.

Suddenly, the wolves were scattering as the storm uttered a howling, screaming wail that she would absolutely, never forget. She blinked and the rain kicked up again along with that scream. It hid them from view, for a single moment, before he burst out of the darkness in front of her and smashed into the wolf that was lunging for her unprotected throat. Dazed, Emily stared.

Spencer killed that wolf with a barbarity she couldn’t fathom; puncturing its skull through its eye-socket with a single crushing bite. Another went for him. He tore its throat out and painted himself with the resulting arterial spray.  Then he turned to her, his butterscotch fur red, and roared, _Where’s Oliver? Oliver!_

But the storm howled and lashed them with sheets of rain, and Oliver didn’t answer.

_Felicity!_ screamed Emily, coming back to life. _Felicity!_

There was a thin cry. Reedy and scared, and the circling wolves—just as disoriented in the rain—went for it as fast as Emily and Spencer did. Towards the two wolves bickering over a small broken thing that they shook and tore at.

Emily killed one as Spencer killed the other, and then she scooped the bloodied scrap of life up into her jaws. The wolves turned towards her. She stepped back, the pup she’d grabbed breathing raggedly in her jaws. From behind them, a voice cried out because she was high, so high, and the wind was trying to throw her down to the waiting teeth below.

Riley.

They were hunting Riley.

But one pup was still somewhere in this washed-out, hellish wasteland. And the wolves didn’t seem any fewer; creatures of the rain and the wind that paced with bloodied fangs and bloodshot eyes. They circled her, cutting her off from her daughters, and she lost what little sense she still retained. _I’ll kill you,_ she screamed without words, and danced furiously with her body twisting into the storm. _You fucks, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill—_

A dark shape flickered between her and them; Spencer stood his ground. Lightning snapped once, illuminating the blood that coated his fur, the frothy line around his reddened jaws. He wore a painted mask of the wolves he’d killed across his face like a trophy, but maddened eyes stared out. If she threatened them with death, he was the reaper come to deliver it; Emily stared at him and knew to fear.

_Go,_ Spencer said harshly, and turned his back on her. Arched and furious and silhouetted against the hungry pack behind him. _Go to Riley. Leave this place. We’ll catch up when I find Felicity._

And the pup in Emily’s mouth was crying, bleeding, and that empty space loomed. Oliver. She was carrying Oliver.

_Spencer…_ Emily said, and teetered on the verge of asking. The empty space loomed, but it could be a trick. Some illusion of the night. She couldn’t ask. He couldn’t answer. Riley called again, her paws slipping on wet wood as she almost fell from her tentative perch. Called for her, for him, for the one who wasn’t answering. Instead of answering, Emily screamed, _Felicity!_ again and shuddered because she couldn’t tell if she’d heard an answer or if it was just her hopeful heart.

_Go_ , he said one final time, and so she did. Ran for the forest and Riley with Oliver in her mouth and half her mind still back facing the wolves in the clearing behind her. She ran and she staggered, because something was gone, something was taken, and her mind hadn’t grasped it yet. She turned, kept turning, towards the place where they’d dragged her mate and pups down, needing to _see_ and yet so mortally afraid that she might get her wish.

She couldn’t see him through the rain or the wind, could only feel his terror and his rage and his pain; Riley tumbled from a tree surrounded by wolves who bolted when Emily exploded from the rain behind them. A black death on shaking paws, she couldn’t go back. She had to leave him.

_I’ll catch up,_ he’d promised, and she held him to that as she fled that place with Riley running at her heels and Oliver bleeding in her mouth. Spencer would catch up. He’d bring their daughter.

Here they were, at the world’s end. She’d known this day would come.

But she trusted him absolutely, and so she ran and left her heart behind.


	23. Crossing Concluded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron**

He was drunk. It wasn’t a good feeling. As he tottered out of the bar into the heat of the summer night, he considered that the feeling adequately summed up the last twenty months: a fast, unstoppable free fall that would almost certainly culminate in a messy end. He wished Reid was here to spin the mathematics on it, because he’d bet it was dizzying. And he wished Emily was here to tell Reid to stop spinning the mathematics on it, because he was far too drunk to deal with that level of geek.

Mostly, he just wished they were here.

The door of the bar banged open behind him and he closed his eyes, hearing his team spilling out silently onto the street. They didn’t say anything. What could be said? Before the door shut, he caught a snippet of the conversation within; the laughter and the normality and the raucous cheers of _maybe someone should check the pound_ being shouted by the drunk group gathered around the evening news. And then the door sealed closed and he was left with nothing but the sound of their breathing and the wary regard of their eyes on him.

“They’re speciest fucks,” Morgan snapped suddenly, probably about as drunk as Hotch was and far less practised at hiding it. “Ignore them, Hotch. They don’t know shit.”

“Jagoffs,” Dave agreed quietly, and Hotch turned to find him standing with his arm around JJ’s shoulders. JJ’s head was down, her expression obscured, and he knew she wasn’t crying. He wouldn’t blame her if she was though. Inside the bar, the news would still be playing the headlines: _Alive or Dead: Is either worth a war?_ juxtaposed over the top of Emily and Reid’s smiling faces.

“I’m going home,” Hotch said, and walked away. Team-building, they’d called it. An excuse to step away from the work and the strain and the escalating frustration that he was _failing_. Failing his team, two of whom were gone and waiting for him to get his shit together to find them, and the rest who were looking to him and finding his leadership lacking. They called after him, goodbyes and his name and a reluctant _wait_ , but he ignored it all. He knew he was a crippling force on their morale. Twenty-eight months since they’d been taken, twenty since they’d begun this hellish dance of court proceedings, hearings, conferences, everything designed to keep them jumping through hoops until everyone just _forgot_ that they’d been hurt.

Feet followed, leather shoes light on the sidewalk. Hotch stepped aside automatically for Dave to take the place by his side where Emily had once proudly stood.

“My car’s nearby,” Dave said, ignoring Hotch’s low growl of dissatisfaction. “I’m too drunk to drive. You’re too drunk to go home. Jack doesn’t need to see you like this.” By ‘like this’, he meant angry and restless and ready to fight the world, all of that hidden below his expressionless face and careful suit. But then, he’d never been able to hide from Dave.

“Jack’s used to his dad being barely there,” Hotch responded instead, bitterness lacing his tone. “If I’m not at work, I’m talking to lawyers, reporters, politicians. I’m fighting alone because _no one_ will stand beside me on this.”

Silence. They kept walking, Hotch automatically following Dave as he turned into a parking lot and sloped slowly across to his car, his fingers working at the buttons of his shirt. Something sharp spiked deep in Hotch’s belly, some wild twist of everything he’d been bottling up in order to present himself as an ‘authority’ on the need to cross the Efisgan border to retrieve what had been taken.

“I’m still here beside you,” Dave said finally. Hotch looked at him and his friend’s eyes were solemn. “Always gonna be, Aaron. Through hell and back.” And he finished this startling proclamation of loyalty with a soft, “Hunt?”

There was a gate into the Green Grid nearby. It was illegal. It was reckless. It was wild.

It was everything Emily thought he wasn’t.

In answer, he toed his shoes off and began to strip, right there in the parking lot with the moon glinting down on them and the wail of an ambulance siren nearby. He stripped and threw his clothes into the car, Dave along with him, and then they were wolves and the night was theirs.

They ran. They darted across a road to a shriek of startled horns, and they shot through a group of revellers with a huff of Hotch’s breath and a cackling bark from Dave. Angry shouts followed them as they loped up the sidewalk without care or qualm, Hotch revelling in the feeling of _freedom_ that came from wearing his fur instead of a suit. If only this freedom extended beyond stolen moments of forgotten strength, into the daylight hours when he stood in front of a board he knew was going to deny his requests no matter how low he tucked his tail with his throat bared to them.

Then they hit the Green Grid, the clack-gate rattling shut behind them, and they ran faster. Pushing their bodies to their limits and beyond, rushing without a destination in mind, drunk and furious and baring their teeth to the mocking sky. Dave snarled and turned that snarl into a desperate howl of _missing you_ and Hotch joined in on the trailing end in a song that begged _come home_. After a startled beat where even the inescapable sounds of traffic and city life seemed to quieten and listen, others joined in.

_We’re sorry for your loss,_ sung the unknown wolves, and Hotch twitched with surprise when he heard a yowling cat-shriek join from the north. A felid shifter of some kind, recognising their song and responding to it. _We grieve with you,_ said another batch of voices, Dave turning his ears towards them without turning his head. _Traitor,_ spat a smaller medley, furious snarling howls that spoke of resentment and rage. Because their song was about the wolves that had been taken, but not everyone believed they hadn’t left willingly.

_Ignore those idiots,_ Dave said, rolling his eyes and kicking up his back feet in an irritated half-sprint forward. _They wouldn’t know their noses from their asses if you drew them a map and glued them to it._

_They’re not a loud minority,_ Hotch commented wearily, because comments like that had become a daily expectation since they’d stood up and said ‘this is happening’. _People are scared. Moving against Efisga means war, civil war. There are therians within this country who would stand against us for doing so, and they’re not afraid to tell people that. All this hatred we’re inciting and for what…_

Dave skidded to a standstill, whirling on Hotch with a _hmph_ and a snick of his great white fangs. _For what?_ he barked, eyes dark. _For them!_

_We don’t even know they’re ali—_ Hotch started, and grunted with surprise as he was suddenly knocked by those big grey paws thumping into his shoulder. Beery breath billowed around him, and Dave was inches away with his expression intent.

_Bullshit we don’t,_ he said furiously. _They’re alive. Prentiss isn’t a wolf that quits on what matters, and her being alive **matters**. They’re alive and they’re fighting to come home—you’re not gonna let them down, are you, Aaron? Because I can feel you doubting yourself. Doubting your leadership. And I can tell you, the only way you fail any one of us who follows at your heels is if you give up on them. Because they haven’t given up on us._

_They’re not going to let us go to them._ Hotch said this with finality, as though it ended the conversation. Because it did, didn’t it? They’d done everything. Exhausted every legal argument, every possible loophole. And at every turn, they’d been told: until you prove beyond a doubt that they were taken, we make no move.

They couldn’t prove that. Worse, the only evidence they had was either circumstantial, or damning. DNA from the blood found in the desert could have been faked. The missing wolves prior to them could have simply been desertions. Emily had a history of running rogue. Spencer had a history of being alone.

_None of them have family they’re close to,_ the judge had ruled dismissively. _No relationships that would encourage them to stay._ By that, he meant family. Pack. Packless wolves, of _course_ they’d gone wild. And Hotch had been forced to stand there and breathe and not snarl, _I’m their pack!_ because that was what they wanted. Him to out himself, to show that he was a man who thought himself above the law.

William refused to comment on his son’s disappearance, Diana was being sheltered by the doctors at her hospital from the relentless public scrutiny. Ethan was gone. Emily was an only child, and her mother—the final damning piece of evidence—had used her ambassadorial privileges to pass into Efisga and out of contact, six months prior. Whatever she was doing, Hotch hoped it was worth the blow she’d caused to her daughter’s case. Because until she returned, every voice that mattered was saying her trip _proved_ her daughter had left by choice.

Checkmate. For twenty months too long.

_No fucking way will they let us,_ Hotch added bitterly, shoving these thoughts aside.

_Maybe not,_ Dave said quietly, tilting his head to the sky, the cloudy moon reflecting in his dark eyes. _So, what are you gonna do?_

To that, Hotch had no answer.

 

* * *

 

What he was going to do, as it turned out, was watch on the sidelines as the case was yanked out of his hands.

His cell rang one morning and he grumbled and shifted into human form, reaching over Jack’s sleeping form to answer it with a gruff, “Hotchner.” It was barely six a.m., on a Saturday, and he was early to rise but not _that_ early.

“Aaron,” Dave said, because he was that early, and his voice was stunned. “TV. Turn on the TV.”

Hotch did, stumbling up and downstairs to the living room, where he fumbled the remote with his eyes still half-gummed shut and Dave’s rough breathing sounding through the cell still pressed to his ear. The TV blared, _Breaking News_ splashed behind two newscasters, and he heard Jack thumping down the stairs after him. Even after all this time, it was still a jolt to his gut to see Emily and Reid’s pictures underneath that _Breaking News_ , but not as much of a jolt as it was when their photos were replaced by a live-streamed video of a woman striding to her car, her arm wrapped around someone smaller by her side. The smaller person’s head was covered by a coat, body turned towards the woman, and the press were seething towards them despite the security pressing them back.

Hotch blinked twice and then recognised her, two seconds before the newscaster began stating, _“It is believed that Ambassador Prentiss crossed back from Efisga early this morning and that she was allegedly accompanied by an Efisgan—what kind of fallout are we looking at if that turns out to be true, Paul? And do we think that this has anything to do with the disappearance of Emily Prentiss?”_

On the video, Elizabeth Prentiss and the person she was sheltering were sliding into a sedan with dark-tinted windows, the coat slipping for a single moment. The person turned, glancing past the camera. A girl. Barely a woman, her eyes huge and overwhelmed. Not Emily. Mousey hair and a thin face, and then they were gone.

“Dad?” Jack asked quietly. “Was that Emily’s Mom?”

“The hell does this mean?” Dave asked at the same time. “Who is that? She does realize that bringing an Efisgan into the country is the _opposite_ of helpful right now, yeah? This doesn’t help our case to cross and it sure as fuck isn’t going to help calm border relations if the Efisgans get wind of this.” But Hotch couldn’t dispel that wide-eyed stare, the terrified expression. He’d seen that before, a few times. On victims released from captivity, exposed to the chaos of the outside world once more. The same blank faced shock, the same overstimulation of every sense. The same defensive shutdown.

_“—it’s believed that Ambassador Prentiss is travelling under guard back to DC with the girl, where she’ll be detained and questioned as to her motives in bringing an illegal alien across the border. Either she’s not talking now, or she’s been ordered not to—”_

“We need to find out when she lands,” Hotch said, smiling thinly at Jack to reassure him that his tension wasn’t aimed at him. “I need to speak to her.”

“Good luck,” Dave said doubtfully. “But I’ll contact Gideon and Garcia… see what we can do.”

But as it turned out, before they could contact her, she contacted them.

The bullpen was crowded, agents and personnel from all walks of the FBI shoulder to shoulder and stiff with strain. It was a strange mirror-scene of the day they’d received the tape from Spencer, and every face was circumspectly expecting something much the same.

Strauss stood before them, her countenance grim. “New evidence has surfaced,” she said into the hush of every agent listening intently. She didn’t have to mention the case; no matter what floor or unit, every sector of the Bureau knew. Whether they’d known Emily or Reid personally, the fallout was impacting everyone. “Early Saturday morning, Ambassador Prentiss crossed over the border into the US with an Efisgan therianthrope.” She paused, mouth opening for a second as she paused over what was coming next. Hotch said nothing, and just focused on breathing. “The Efisgan has claimed asylum.”

Something low and frantic started building low in Hotch’s gut. Asylum. She was claiming persecution.

Hope. The something was hope.

“From Efisga?” Gideon asked, the only voice in the room. For good reason. If this asylum was granted, it was a concession to their case. It was an admittance that there _was_ something to their fears. “She—”

“She’s Dr. Quinn Sinclair,” Garcia burst out with, shrinking down when people looked at her. Before she could fall silent, Strauss nodded at her, twitching her head towards the screen behind her. “She was born in the US, her family is American, and in 2000 she went missing from her sister’s college campus, along with her sister. Top of her class, years ahead of her peers, she has a damn _doctorate_ and no one bothered looking for them because they said they’d just _gone North_.” She was upset, breathing fast, pressing the remote for the plasma violently.

A picture of the girl flickered up. Hotch stared at her, holding her doctorate degree and beaming, surrounded by family. A click, and a second picture appeared next to it. Quinn again, this time standing against a wall with her brown eyes huge and gaze locked on someone just past the camera. Her face was red, her mouth pale, her face thin. There was a thin loop of scarring through her throat that the harsh light of the room she was in threw into sharp detail.

“That scarring,” Morgan said suddenly. “That’s from a collar. Iron collars—they use them in therian slave trafficking. Iron slides embed shallowly into the skin from the inside of the collar, stopping shifting.”

“It’s a federal crime to even be in possession of one,” Gideon murmured. “This is the proof we need. Is she speaking out against them?”

Strauss nodded. “It is and she is,” she responded, and Hotch couldn’t decipher her expression but she was looking at him. Waiting for something. Garcia pressed a button, and the plasma switched to a camera feed. A hotel room, with Elizabeth and Quinn sitting on a couch. Elizabeth’s hand was on Quinn’s knee. There were armed guards in black behind them. A man sat on the couch opposite.

_“Speak openly,”_ he was saying, and Hotch felt that frantic feeling stir up faster. _“No one here will harm you, ma’am.”_

Quinn looked up. Hotch had expected fear, misery, maybe confusion. All expressions she’d worn in the previous footage he’d seen of her. But none of that was visible now. Her expression was clear and _determined_.

_“My name is Quinn Sinclair. Eight years ago, I and my sister were taken from my sister’s college campus by Efisgan therianthropes. We were drugged and carried across the border against our will, where we were confined within a Northern compound and forcibly pair-bonded to wolves who were not our chosen mates, nor us theirs.”_

_“You have dependants from this pair-bonding?”_ The interviewer’s voice was soft, careful, and Hotch shuddered as those words sunk home. A low murmur passed through the crowd as they all registered it: ‘forcibly pair-bonded.’ Confirmation of their fears. Someone touched his arm. He thought it might be JJ, was dimly surprised when he glanced and it was Blake.

_“Yes. I don’t know how many. I don’t know their names. They confined me in a room with a male wolf as I entered oestrus, triggering a seasonal response in him. Once the biological processes were initiated, we were both…”_ Her faltering voice was audible, swallowing loudly. Hotch breathed through a wave of nausea, watching Elizabeth carefully as the woman visibly paled. _“… drugged. They drugged us. An MDMA cocktail containing several other psychoactive concentrations, with the result that we were coerced into an extended mating, culminating in a pair-bond being formed and the conception of young.”_

_“Where is your mate?”_

_“I don’t know.”_ She said it bluntly but there was pain there. _“They… he’s gone. He’s… gone. And they never even let me hold my pups. As soon as contractions began, they muzzled and blindfolded me, using a noxiously scented topical cream to dull my olfactory senses. The painkillers they used were excessive and I was unable to ascertain how many pups I gave birth to, their scent, their sight, their… anything. They took them from me, all those years ago, and I was never allowed to know which of the dozens of that year’s pups were mine.”_

_“Was your mate also abducted?”_

_“Yes. His name is Ethan Reid, of the Sandstone Wolves in Las Vegas. He crossed the border willingly, but was snatched from an outpost town where he stopped for supplies. He was beaten, drugged, and forced to conceive pups with me. Once that had occurred, they controlled him using threats to both of us. He… we weren’t allowed contact with our family. We were told to believe our families dead, and, eventually, we did.”_

The silence broke with a sharp outcry, people surging up, talking together. Alex’s fingers bit down, now more to hold herself up than anything comforting. Gideon moved, his face stunned. But Quinn was still talking, and every word was damning:

_“They wanted wolves to help them create a new world, to bring back the ‘glory’ of our species. They’re a cult, and they worked tirelessly to indoctrinate us to their cause. And we caved. We had to in order to survive. We helped them, we **helped** them, but we also sabotaged them as best we could… Ethan created a sterilizing chemical compound. We knew the risks, but they wanted wolves who could help them achieve their goals, they wanted geniuses and doctors and they wanted Ethan’s pups, as many as he could sire. They were going to take him and force him onto other girls, other wolves, so we administered the sterilization. And it worked. But it didn’t change the compound’s goals… they simply tried again with a new target who contained the genetic elements they wished to breed into their population.”_

“Reid,” Dave said, looking ill. “They took Agent Reid.”

“Oh my god,” whispered JJ. 

_“Because of your actions against the compound, do you believe that you are in danger if you return to Efisga?”_

_“Yes. But I don’t want to return. Efisga isn’t my country, it never has been. I’m American. My family are American. My mate and my children are American—despite where they were born, due to no choice of their own. I want to bring them home.”_

_“Quinn, I’m going to ask you now about something unrelated to your application for asylum. I need to remind you that this is being recorded and that anything you say may be used as evidence against you or other parties in a court of law. Do you wish to proceed?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“During your confinement at the compound, did you ever encounter these people?”_ The picture he held up wasn’t visible, but every one of them knew who was portrayed.

_“Yes. That’s Ethan’s brother, Spencer Reid. And Emily Prentiss. I know them. They were there.”_

_Thump_. Hotch’s heart slammed once. JJ hissed. Gideon was so still he looked carved from stone.

_“By choice?”_

_“No. They arrived on the 3 rd of February 2006. Ethan was distraught. They brought them sedated and caged to the compound confines and requested I medically process their admittance to our pack.” _Hotch winced at the ‘ _our pack’_ and the dull monotone her voice had taken, a dangerous reminder that she might be here, but the cult still held her in thrall. That it likely held their friends just as tightly. A grim, sickening memory of Reid’s ambiguous smile assaulted him. _“I did so. They were dehydrated and suffering from minor infections caused by long-term catheterization. I ascertained they’d been unconscious for the duration of approximately a week and gave the all-clear for them to be roused once they had been collared.”_

_“Collared?”_

_“Before the induction process is complete, all new arrivals are kept confined to lupine form by the use of iron collars. Ethan managed to grant them some leeway, his brother and Agent Prentiss, and they weren’t collared until… until later.”_ Her hand flickered to her throat. Someone behind Hotch was breathing raggedly. _“These collars are removed once the person is considered indoctrinated into the ideals of the compound. Females remain collared until they’ve successfully birthed their litters, to stop them from forcing a miscarriage by shifting.”_

Reid hadn’t been wearing a collar in the video.

_“Were they forcibly pair-bonded? As you were, with drugs and coerced mating?”_

A pen tapped against a desk as someone placed it down carefully. Elizabeth was a rigid statue, despite clearly knowing what was coming. They all knew what was coming. But there was a whisper, just a whisper, of hope—

_“Yes.”_

Hotch made a noise. He only knew because suddenly the team was near him, eyes on him. And she wasn’t done.

_“To each other?”_

_“Yes.”_

“Oh my god, Reid,” Morgan moaned. “He’d _destroy_ himself over doing that…”

“Em…” JJ that time, eyes locked on Hotch.

_“Did a pregnancy result?”_

_“Yes. It wasn’t wanted and it wasn’t voluntary, but it occurred.”_ As Quinn said this, a spark returned to her voice, a vicious snarl of _wolf_. Elizabeth, Hotch noted numbly, was crying. _“I cannot stress enough that it **was not** consensual, on either of their behalves. No matter how my case results—this is happening. It happened to me. It happened to Agents Reid and Prentiss. They were both traumatized and emotionally brutalized by it. It has happened to others, countless others, and it will continue happening unless you let me tell my story—openly, not to a single camera in a shitty hotel room. Please! My sister died because of them, birthing pups she never wanted; my mate is missing; my own pups are strangers to me. And I had to watch my mate’s brother go through the exact same process that almost destroyed Ethan—watch Emily go through the exact same process of isolation and psychological manipulation, of **torture** , that they put me through to **tame** me. I have evidence—tapes, medical files, I risked **everything** to bring them to you. Please, you have to let me speak. Aaron Hotchner, he told me about Aaron Hotchner, can I—”_

The video screen paused. Strauss stepped forward. Everything was numb, stop-motion. Hotch’s mind was racing in circles; Emily, drugged; Emily, alone; Emily, pregnant and frightened and calling for him.

“Quinn Sinclair is not lying,” said Strauss firmly. “This is our proof.”

The screen changed again. Someone cried out. It might have been him. It might have been Dave. It could, honestly, have been any one of them looking up at a too-sharp image of a black wolf in a tiny room. The wolf paced in shuddering bursts as the camera jumped through time. Pacing and pacing and pacing in circles with her head low and her sides swollen and her gait broken, as the timestamp in the corner denoted endless hours passing.

“How much of that footage do you have?” Gideon asked. Hotch wanted to close his eyes, look away. “Is she ever removed from the room?”

“Months. And no. We’re still going through it, but it doesn’t appear so. Her captivity is absolute. This is horrifying, I understand that, but it’s also exactly what you’ve been searching for since they were taken, Agent Gideon. This is it. We’re initiating an immediate request to undergo a search and rescue in Efisga for any wolf within this compound who wishes to be returned home, and any children on site as well to ensure that any resultant offspring are also found. It’s time our people came home. _All_ of our people.”

Hotch said nothing as the room exploded with noise and activity. He said nothing, just stared at Emily in that tiny, white-washed cage. _06/18/2006_ said the timestamp. The hours flashed by. _06/19/2006_ it said now, even as he watched. She paced and she paced and she paced and he knew while he’d been here doing it _legally,_ she had been steadily losing her mind.

“I want to see this evidence,” he said to no one in particular. Despite this, Strauss heard him. She nodded, bizarrely, because he’d thought she was going to fight him on this.

“I can do one better,” she replied. “Quinn has requested to speak to you. We leave within the hour.”

 

* * *

 

Quinn was alone, and she cringed away when he entered the room. A flicker of unease sparked at this show of fear, and he paused by the door.

“My name is Aaron Hotchner,” he said finally, credentials in his hand. “You asked to speak to me?”

“Yes,” she said, watching him with wolf eyes. They looked human, to anyone who didn’t know how a wolf would stare a threat down, but he knew he was being examined and found wanting. Or maybe she was uneasy with his masculine presence, which was entirely a possibility. “You are Emily’s chosen mate.”

He swallowed hard at that. ‘Chosen mate’ as opposed to ‘actual mate’, and it hurt that, in this girl’s life, that was a necessary distinction. “I am Emily’s friend,” he said, without committing to that statement. It was layered with traps that he could fall into until he knew where he stood with this girl who’d been hurt, just like Emily was being hurt.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. She was reticent, mouse-like, but there was spine there. There had to be, he knew, for her to have even worked up the courage to come here. “Emily gave a very different impression of you,” she said. “She thought often of a wolf with coal-black fur and soft eyes. She loved you, and was adamant you would come for her.”

He didn’t respond.

“You can speak freely, Elizabeth assures us that we are alone.” Quinn fiddled with her untouched meal on the table in front of her. “I don’t mean to be so… abrasive. I’m not… it’s been a long time since I was required to converse with someone who wasn’t viewing me as simply a collection of organs around a defunct uterus, or Ethan.”

“Can you tell me about Ethan?” Hotch asked, despite only really wanting to ask about two others.

Quinn twitched, and he saw true pain cross her features. “No,” she said shortly. “I don’t want to.” As he stepped closer, responding to her quiet misery, she bit down hard enough on her lip that he saw it turn white with the pressure.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “May I ask about E… Emily.” He took a seat across from her, folding his hands in his lap to hide the tremble. Almost unconsciously, he scented; she stunk of fear and grief and anxiety, as well as a bone-deep scent of ice and snow that seemed laced through her being.

“It’s hot here.” Drawing her knees to her chest, she shivered despite her complaint, eyes distant. He wondered if she was reaching for her mate, just as he’d desperately searched for Emily in the time after she’d been taken. He wondered if she’d have more luck than he’d had. “I’d forgotten how heat felt. Those files, there. They’re all Emily’s. Some are Spencer’s.”

Hotch looked where he was guided. The pile of printouts was large enough that he knew she’d have to have brought the data on a USB rather than in hard copy, perhaps printing it here. When he picked up a pile and began thumbing through, it was dense. Medical data, printouts on raw data. He’d need weeks to pick through it all. And throughout this, Quinn was silent. Oddly reluctant to speak, despite her professions that he could speak freely.

She was withholding something.

“We received a video from Spencer,” Hotch said suddenly, lifting his gaze to her for a heartbeat to see how she responded to this. “After his abduction. He said he was happy and that their defection was willing. We couldn’t see any notable evidence of him being coerced into speaking for the camera. Was he indoctrinated?”

She shook her head. The relief was huge and instantaneous. As sick as he felt about what he _knew_ must have happened to them, despite the deep-sunk possessive _rage_ that simmered, he hadn’t wanted her to tell him that Spencer was broken. That they’d taken his brilliant mind and twisted it to suit them, reprogramming him like a faulty machine. He couldn’t have handled hearing that Emily had been, was still, alone in her captivity.

It never occurred to him to ask if Emily had ever given in.

“Spencer knew that their only hope of escape was to get the collar off,” Quinn began, haltingly. “He… played along to achieve that freedom for himself. And was successful. He knew that to escape, they would need to go before Emily gave birth, or they would lose their children. And he knew that to take her into the arctic wilderness with them both collared and trapped as wolves, while she gave birth, would be a death sentence. He played along to save their lives.”

The relief vanished. She was using past tense. The door behind them opened, and he scented an older wolf, female, weary. Grieving.

_Grieving_.

He turned his head and looked at Elizabeth as she closed the door behind her. Quinn rifled through the paperwork, pulling forth several manila folders.

“Why am I here?” he asked. Not wanting to know. Needing to know.

“Because there’s every chance that even with what I’ve brought them, they won’t send someone to save my children,” Quinn replied, her voice thick. She held out of the folders. “If they won’t, if the government won’t move to rescue them, you’re my only hope, Agent Hotchner.”

And Elizabeth said nothing.

“They’ll send someone,” he said. If he’d been a wolf, his hackles would be up. “They have to. Two federal agents—”

“They’re going to start asking why there’s no data on Emily or Spencer after October ’06,” Elizabeth cut in gently. He didn’t look at her, because he could hear the waver. “They’ll place trade restrictions, travel restrictions, embargos on Efisga… they’ll create political chaos and they’ll likely stop this from happening again. Maybe even get some wolves back. But they won’t cross that border and risk a war if they don’t think they have to. Which leaves behind every wolf that’s been brainwashed and indoctrinated, every pup born to that hell.”

“Emily—” Hotch tried again.

“Is dead,” Quinn said bluntly. She opened the folder. He looked. Blinked. Didn’t understand what he was looking at; images of a rusted snow mobile being cinched from a half-frozen river. “They escaped. We helped them escape, on this machine. And then we found it sunk in the mud come spring. If they went through the ice, they’re dead. No one could survive a plunge into that water during an October blizzard, not even in fur—it’s minus forty out there. And if Emily survived and Reid didn’t, she’s still dead. She can’t survive without him. Not collared, not pregnant. She’d have died in childbirth, or starved in the winter.”

“I’m sorry, Agent,” Elizabeth said, even though Hotch had the dizzy feeling he should be saying it to her. “I tried. I knew we wouldn’t be able to move forward without witness testimony, but the compound is isolated and most Efisgans don’t even know it exists. It took me four months to even find the place, and another month to get a message through to anyone who would allow me to smuggle them out and back to the US. I honestly thought Emily would still be… alive.” Her voice cracked and broke.

Hotch looked down at the picture again, at the ice and the snow and the bubbling water behind the heavily clothed people pulling the skidoo free of the cold depths. And a voice in his head reminded him _you knew you’d waited too long_.

He’d waited. He’d been told to wait and, like a good dog, he had. And they were dead. Killed trying to return to him. To return home.

It changed nothing.

“Is this a river?” he asked through lips as cold as if it had been him tipped into the deadly water. He wished, for a moment, it had been.

“Lake,” Quinn replied. “Closed water system. Yes, their bodies are likely still within it. They’d be almost impossible to find, however, it’s not a small system and we lacked the technology to do so. Ethan tried, before…” She fell silent. “He was obsessed with finding his brother. Made himself sick. They… they started getting suspicious of his emotional response. They’d pretended they were nothing to each other, you see, and yet he was _destroyed_ by thinking his brother was… dead.” And she looked into her lap, shoulders shaking. She loved him. Forced or not, she loved her mate. But she was here alone.

He ached for her.

“Do you have the coordinates for the compound?” he asked, and rose. She nodded.

“I could lead—” she began.

“No.” Elizabeth was watching Hotch, her features sharp and fierce. “Your family are coming to defend you, Quinn, and demand you be reinstated as a citizen. If you leave the country, they’ll never let you return. That won’t help your pups. Aaron, you do understand that Emily is very likely dead? Even if they survive that lake, it’s been almost two years and she would have given birth by then. Our family has never birthed easily. Before you decide anything.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. These people had taken Emily from him. They’d taken Spencer. They’d taken so many from _so many_ , and they couldn’t be allowed to continue. He thought of Jack and felt the wolf snarl and spit inside of him, furious and aching to _hunt_. Haunted by images of caged pups and forced unions and Emily slowly slipping below the ice, her eyes closed and lips blue, he knew what he had to do. “There are others there who need to come home. And if the government won’t do it, I will. Even if I have to cross Efisga on foot to do so.”

Grief would drive him, and once he arrived, hatred would fuel him. And the compound would fall.

Elizabeth smiled. In that moment, with the catlike grin Hotch knew and _hurt_ to see once more, she was more Emily’s mother than she’d ever seemed to him before. “Then I’ll lead you,” she said, stunning him. “I know the way, and I have contacts that can get us a good distance before we have to take to paw. One way or another, Aaron, we’re bringing my girl home.”

Hotch nodded. And all those lost with her.

He refused to fail again.

 

* * *

 

_By my side, Jack,_ Hotch told his son, his heart aching as his pup trudged forward to pace alongside him, tail between his legs and ears flattened. Together, silently, the two wolves walked through the forest towards the usually silent pack meet. _I’m sorry._

_I know,_ Jack replied quietly, his mind voice thin and miserable. The loneliness that Hotch had always worried about feeling in his son’s mind had finally arrived; turning his thoughts morosely inward. _You have to go. You have to be a hero._

_Sometimes doing what’s right means doing what’s hard,_ Hotch said, lowering his head to brush his muzzle across the golden furred pup. Beginning to darken now, into a burnished adult honey colour. Just like Haley. Hotch hoped he’d be allowed to return to see that. To see his son grow.

There was every chance he might not be able to.

They emerged onto the pack meet, and it was full. Unlike the last time they’d gathered to celebrate together, it was silent. Everyone there was in their fur. Everyone looked to Hotch.

Dave spoke first. _You’re going to Efisga._

_Yes._

A low murmur of worry and shock curled around the clearing. Wolves he knew, wolves he trusted, whispered amongst themselves. He caught snippets. _Mad, he’s lost it. They won’t let him return. They’ll take his son away._

_Jack—_ began JJ.

_Aaron has already made arrangements for full parental and legal custody to be transferred to me,_ Jessica cut in. _Until he returns._ She paused, her brindled fur fluffed up with distress. _He **will** return._

Hotch silenced the chatter that began around them with a soft huff that nonetheless carried. Every wolf looked to him. _They took our people,_ he said simply. Now wasn’t the time for a rousing speech to incite anger and outrage. He just needed them to understand why he was doing this. And why he was doing this alone. _Because of them, two of our people are very likely dead. I refuse to allow that to go without justice. But this is my fight—none of you need to pay this cost._

_Bullshit,_ Dave snarled, but Hotch growled at him. The grey wolf sunk back down into the hot ground, his hackles up and mind seething with anger.

_I go alone,_ Hotch repeated. _If they are, somehow, alive, I will find them. And if they are not, I will bring their bodies home. And I will ensure that no other pack again is ever hurt like ours has been._

He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t face their rising horror, their grief. They already grieved him, believing he wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ return, and they were likely right. But he couldn’t expose Jack to that. He turned, and he walked away with his head high and his body taut, expecting someone to shout, to snarl, to tell him he was a fool for this.

Instead, there was a single howl. A low, despairing cry. Long-drawn, slow and hopeless, and every hair on Hotch’s body stood on end at the sound. _We walk with you,_ that howl said, and it was a goodbye song. _Your final song, we sing with you._

_We are with you,_ came the sound of countless throats as the rest of his pack joined in. JJ joined Dave’s lonely song, and then Will, and then Jessica, until every wolf in the clearing was singing their pride and their pain and his repose. He and Jack walked from that clearing to the sound of their pack filled with regret and yet still saluting them, and Hotch didn’t look back once.

He couldn’t. There was only forward now.

_I love you, Dad,_ Jack said quietly, as the singing faded. _No matter what happens._

_I love you too, Jack, always and forever. Never forget that._

* * *

He left the rental car in the parking bay three miles from the Efisgan crossing and went the rest of the way in his fur. He could have slipped over unnoticed—plenty of therians did—but he refused to be cowed by the guards on the border. He carried his tags in his mouth. He would leave them by the gate for the guards to list him as defected. Elizabeth would cross at the same gateway, but hers would be a legal crossing. Unlike him, she wasn’t being stripped of everything by this defection. Because that’s what it would legally be seen as. Not a rescue, but a flight.

He hadn’t gone quietly. As soon as the word had come informing them that due to the suspected deaths of the missing agents, a search and rescue into Efisga was considered an unnecessary political risk, he’d walked into Strauss’s office and resigned. He’d told her why, and then he’d told everyone else who’d listen. “I will not allow our families to be taken without justice,” he’d said to the reporters’ microphones as he’d stepped outside to a throng of press. “And I will bring every wolf who wants to come home, home. I hope you’re prepared for that.”

And here he was. About to leave his country and his home behind.

He stepped out from the trees on the wide-open border, the sun on his back and ground hot under his paws, and froze. Because it wasn’t empty. Not even close.

Everyone there was silent, a cautious standoff. Press, but he’d expected that. _FBI Agent defects to save his people_ was a damn good headline. _Wolf Goes Rogue to Save His Lover_ was an even better one. That would sell some papers.

No, the press didn’t shock him.

Everyone else there did.

_I’m going to kill you,_ he told Dave furiously, striding towards his oldest friend sitting patiently on the asphalt. Behind him, wolves thronged. Humans walked between them. Wolves he knew. Wolves he didn’t. _The hell are you doing here?_

_You took your time,_ Dave replied smugly. _Knew you’d travel via Vegas. How’s Diana?_

Hotch ignored that blatant attempt at changing the subject. _You’re not coming_. He refused to be responsible for his friend losing everything.

Dave just blinked, slowly, and grinned. _Try and stop me,_ he replied. He looked at the wolves there with him. Hotch counted quickly. Almost two dozen; some agents, some of his own pack. Morgan was there, leaning against a car with his expression grim. Elizabeth watched everything with a kind of intense interest from her own car, perched like Emily on the hood. _Try and stop **them**._

_Who are they?_ Hotch breathed, and a wolf broke away from the pack to speak to him. Hackles up and gait stiff, he was an animal clearly out of his comfort zone. Around him, many of the other wolves looked the same. None of them were comfortable in such mixed company.

_My name is Arthur Sinclair,_ he introduced himself, head high and tails stiff. _These bastards took my daughters. They still have my grandchildren. I refuse to be turned away, Agent._

A low thrum of agreement behind him, and Hotch realized. They were families. Other packs that had been hurt. Humans, as well, who stood beside their wolf companions just as determinedly.

_Looks like we cross together, Aaron,_ Dave said softly, standing. _You’ve got yourself a pack to lead._

Hotch nodded slowly. And he knew; if he refused them, they’d follow him anyway. Because this wasn’t just about him. By the gates, the soldiers on guard looked like they wanted to protest as the wolves rippled and looked towards them.

But Hotch strode forward. _Let’s go then,_ he said, and led the way.

No one stopped them.


	24. Rancorously Reposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Seven: Chapter Twenty-Four to Twenty-Seven**

Spencer buried her alone.

For a time after their flight, Emily huddled out the worst of the storm in an open-sided den made of a thick buffalo berry bush. There were safer dens nearby, caves or hollowed trees, but she couldn’t close herself in quite yet. The wind beat at them but the rain was redirected by the sheltering leaves, and there they stayed. From Spencer, there was nothing. Just a clouded fog of primality that pushed her away from his mind. She tried and then she stopped trying to reach him, because he was raw, he was hurting, and he was _enraged._

She hid from that anger. She kept her two babies close, desperately licking at the wounds littering Oliver’s beautiful fur, waiting for her mate and her third pup to return. _Want Felik,_ Riley howled over and over again. _Want Daddy_. Oliver was silent, his blood turning the damp ground under them a frothy pink, his mind confused and numb.

Spencer returned. Almost a day later, and she should be furious but she wasn’t, because his paws were muddy and he was alone and she knew what he’d been doing. Refused to know. Hated him. Loved him. Despised him.

Hid from him.

He left. He returned. He said nothing; his mind was closed to her. Emily took note of none of these things and barely a word passed between them.

And then he left again and didn’t come back.

The anger returned, muted this time. She closed her eyes, ignored Oliver’s growing restlessness as he worried and fretted and asked for his twin, clinging to sleep because it wasn’t _this_.

She dreamed of a hunt and she dreamed of death. Wolves fell beneath her vengeful jaws. She hunted them like dogs, like rabbits, and she killed them just as easily. Just as savagely. When she woke, she felt a little mad, creeping out from under the bushes to scream this madness at the sky until her sides were heaving and her mind was shattered.

The pups screamed with her. Because there was loss in her manic song.  How many days had passed since the storm? She didn’t know, couldn’t know, but her pups were hungry and she was too and he was still hunting a food they couldn’t eat.

The pups walked with her, quiet and sore, and she caught them a rabbit.

_Daddy?_ Riley demanded, and Emily couldn’t answer. Just licked her ears numbly, a wild wolf with no voice to speak of, and took comfort in this empty reckoning. A wolf couldn’t grieve or know pain or note that there were two pups where there should be three. A wild wolf only knew that there was food for the young, a trail back to a somewhat safe den, and here—on this bank they walked along—signs of digging.

She stopped being a wild wolf then because even a wild wolf would cringe at this.

When Spencer returned, she was sitting by Felicity’s grave and watching a beetle march across the claw-marked dirt.

She finally looked at him; nothing looked back, just a wild tawny wolf covered in blood, the saddlebag and coat still on but both marked savagely by the wolves’ fangs. She reached for him and felt grief and pain but muted, distant, and knew he was hiding too. Hiding in that tempting desolation of their animal minds.

_Daddy!_ both puppies cried, and galloped towards him. He didn’t even look at them, just kept staring blankly at her. _Daddy?_ Oliver questioned, sitting on his rump with his front paws in the air as he begged for attention. And he sent a vivid picture of a butterscotch puppy, her little muzzle turned happily to the sky, and an inquisitive _where?_ that was a feeling not a thought.

And Spencer stared at nothing.

They couldn’t both hide.

Emily breathed deep, and turned away from the grave that stunk of him and her. _She died quickly,_ she lied, and determinedly did not grieve. _She didn’t even know what was happening, Spencer._

He said nothing. Just watched her with heedless, vacant eyes.

_You need to eat,_ she tried again, trying to reach him through this basic need. Nothing. _I’ll go get you something and come back, okay?_ Like she was going to the store. Like this was any other day. Like they weren’t standing by the grave of their child, barely a foot long and half as wide. Her stomach lurched as she imagined Spencer carrying Felicity’s body this far, a limp, cold weight where it had once been warm and kicking. She thought of him talking to her, pleading with her. She thought of how that would have looked, the damage done. She thought too loud.

_Felik no Daddy mouth,_ Oliver said, whirling on her with his eyes wild and his face made unfamiliar by the open bite across his jaw and nose. Another on his throat. There was nothing she could do to help him with either. _Felik Daddy!_ And another picture; his sister riding on their father’s back.

Emily felt sick.

_I’ll get food_ , she managed, and ran from that place, leaving them by the scent of lilacs and the churned-up ground. Compartmentalizing as she ran, because they couldn’t both hide from this.

_Felicity is dead,_ she told herself over and over and over again, trying to stem the horror into something numb. _She’s dead she’s dead she’s dead she’s dead._

She returned, empty jawed and barely sane, to panic.

_Daddy sick,_ Riley howled. Oliver, huddled by the limp form of Spencer slumped near the grave, stared at Emily with huge eyes over his red muzzle, bleeding again from where he kept pawing at it. Her heart skipped a beat at the sight. Spencer was still, his sides motionless, his mind blank.

_Dead,_ hissed her cruel brain fatalistically.

And she walked slowly over there. Slowly, because that would put off the moment she found out for sure. Slowly, watching her shadow creep towards him and finally fall over him, as she leaned across his body without breathing to look at his face. His eyes were open, glazed. Even as she watched, a fly landed on a cut on his cheek, a bite, and his whiskers twitched at the touch of its wing. Alive.

She breathed again.

_Spencer?_ she tried, and probed into his mind. Listless, it opened to her and she slipped inside into the numbness she’d been seeking. Like a sticky layer over his very being, she sunk deep with a gasp into a cloying fog of absolute disconnection, feeling her body responding to the turmoil in his as it registered his vital processes shutting off and cooling down to preserve energy. _Spence, look at me. You’re going into shock. Love, please, look at me. Something. Anything. Spencer!_

She screamed it because she _needed_ him, but he just closed his eyes. Defeated, for now, and choked by that creeping loss, she withdrew.

_Ow,_ Oliver whispered, curling close to Spencer and leaving a fresh smear of red on his dirty fur. Emily looked at him. Then back at his dad. Spencer was still, but his body was littered with bites and gashes, some still bleeding sluggishly. They needed medical attention. They needed food. They needed shelter.

They needed Spencer.

But she was alone.

_Oliver is hurt,_ she said firmly, her voice overloud. He had to respond to this. He couldn’t _not_ respond to this. _Spencer, what do I do? I don’t know how to help him. I need hands._

Nothing.

A slow rain started up. She gathered her pups, the two that lived, and left him by that lonely grave. The pups came first. They had to come first.

_I’m sorry,_ she said.

 

* * *

 

_Pine resin has antibacterial properties,_ whispered a voice to her in her dreams, and she startled awake to human hands scooping her son out from next to her. She watched as Spencer quietened the complaining Oliver with a soft word, gripping the pup between his thighs as he smeared a sticky glob of amber sap across the pup’s wounds, covering them completely. Red lines marred the grimy skin of Spencer’s legs as Emily examined him, where Oliver’s kicking back feet scratched and bit at him.

_Oliver, stop,_ she scolded, continuing her survey of her mate’s human form and feeling something low in her gut sink even lower. Rake-thin with bites torn wider from the act of shifting while hurt, he was a mud-streaked, bloody caricature of the man she’d known, heavily bearded with matted hair and reddened eyes on a ghoulishly pale face. _Spencer?_

But he put Oliver back gently by her belly, and wordlessly slid up and out of the scraped-out den below the berry bush. Scared, she followed him. _Spencer?_

He walked without seeming to know where he was going, his stride weak and uncertain and his head bowed against the world. Long hair hanging in thick clumps of filth and spine dotting his back with a line of sharp bumps. Despite his evident confusion, they ended this hauntingly meandering walk exactly where she’d feared they would. Human and broken, he crouched by the grave with his fingers trailing in the dirt. Eventually, his knees tipped into the ground and there he sat, and there he stayed. Unmoving even as they watched.

_Daddy?_ Riley whispered, inching up behind Emily with her thoughts baffled at this odd behaviour. Oliver pressed beside her, his eyes locked on Spencer’s hand and his nose twitching at the stink of the sap on his fur.

_Don’t do this_ , Emily begged, because days had passed and she was still numb but at least her numb was _functional._ She’d grieve later, when she could afford to, because she knew they were losing more than just a daughter right now. _Spencer, we need to move. We’re too close to the wolves. We’re hungry. There isn’t enough game here. Spencer, my milk is gone. I can’t, I tried to feed them, it’s **gone**. We’ll starve!_

But he was deaf to her in this broken form, perhaps a deliberate reason behind shifting. As a human, he couldn’t hear them requiring him. She walked over to him, drawn helplessly by a need so strong his body was _screaming_ with it despite his silence, and licked at the gashes that littered his skin. Even at the rough touch of her tongue as she pressed close to him, he didn’t respond.

_We can’t stay here,_ she begged him, but stay they did.

 

* * *

 

She made him drink after a week. Bullying and shoving him, she practically dragged him away from the grave by his ankle and to the nearby river, poking and prodding at him until he crouched by the water and brought handfuls to his chapped lips. Without heart or thought, but he _did_ respond, and that was an improvement from hunching over his daughter like he hoped to sink down and join her. But, as soon as his thirst was sated, he slunk back.

She began to hate him for this.

_Stay with your dad,_ she told the pups when she went to hunt. Neither wanted to. Both pulled away. Both were terrified of this empty stranger wearing their father’s skin—not even his fur, because he hadn’t returned to his wolfish form despite the still-cool nights. _Stay!_

It was cruel to leave them when they wanted anything but, but they had to eat. And hunting was hard in this wet, rocky place. Game was wily, used to the wolfish hunters nearby, and had plenty of places to scuttle away out of reach of her jaws.

She didn’t think much of what they’d lost, because she couldn’t let it slow her down. Life became a series of endless fruitless hunts culminating in her going home and gathering the pups from where they were quietly pressed together as far from their motionless dad as they could get without leaving his direct line of sight. She stayed nearby once, just to see, watching as Riley worked up the courage to try to march away from Spencer, and as Spencer got up without enthusiasm and wordlessly herded her back. As soon as she was back at the patch of rock where Emily had sat them, Spencer returned to the depression in the dirt he’d made with his body and reclosed his eyes.

The sight should have been a relief. Some sign that he wasn’t completely gone.

Instead, she felt colder than ever. If he _could_ function like this, he was choosing not to. Or, alternatively and much more likely—because she didn’t actually believe he’d let them starve if he was capable of anything else—he wasn’t functional, and this was simply a facsimile of living.

She slipped away without confronting him, because she was a slave to her fears and this… this, she was realizing, was more frightening than even her half-formed beliefs that they’d never fit in again at home. The notion that to survive she may have to walk away from him. From the grief that they should be sharing but were instead hoarding up to suffer apart.

_You’ll never lose me,_ she’d told him once, but now she was on the cusp of doing just that.

She came home, padding lethargically to the gravesite to find her splintered family, and found no one there. The panic was immediate and crippling. In that gut-wrenching second of sheer shutdown, she was vividly aware of the hot sun overhead, the dead rat she’d found hanging stiff from her jaws, the buzz of a nearby insect as it hummed around a tree. And she was aware of the loudest silence she’d ever heard.

Then she heard it. A human cry, but not an adult.

A child.

She wasn’t aware of walking towards that noise. Somewhere on the way, she dropped the rat. To her mind, she went from that gravesite to suddenly there, beside the buffalo berry bush, looking at Spencer as he kneeled and held his arms out to a screaming, red-faced toddler. Emily blinked. For a wild moment, Emily thought, _where on earth did **that** come from? _

And then it clicked.

_Rilly big,_ Oliver said uncertainly, dancing around on nervous paws as his sister cringed to the ground with her bare belly pressed to the dirt, all long-limbed and awkward in a body that didn’t feel right anymore. Eyes turned to Emily; darker than Emily had expected them to be considering how hazel they seemed in her black-furred face. A bow-shaped mouth opened in a soundless scream. Her ears were still wolfy, pointed and furred, her back legs shaped wrong as she tried frantically to return to something she knew. She was terrified.

“Riley,” Spencer husked from a throat that didn’t seem to work effectively anymore. “Baby, look at me.” Riley did, blinking frantically and shaking her hair, matted black curls flopping around her face and into her eyes. Emily stepped forward, stunned, and drank in the sight of her daughter’s human body; chubby legs, dirty skin, round face.

“Come here, love, come to me,” Spencer soothed, and Emily snapped into action. Striding forward, she used her nose to scoot her baby into Spencer’s arms, something inside her chest cracking and aching as he gathered her up and hugged her close to his chest, mouth pressed to her hair. His eyes were damp. He spoke to her, a low murmuring hum of everything soft that ever passed between a father and daughter, but his gaze was locked on Emily and he was crying. “Early shifting can be linked to developmental learning difficulties,” Spencer said, lowering Riley into his lap as suddenly as though he’d run out of the strength to hold her. Watching him, Emily saw his skin turn ashen, his body sway, and figured that was exactly what had happened. But he was _talking._ He looked down at their hiccupping daughter as she seemed to recover from her panic of suddenly being strangely formed and without the resources to speak to her family, her chest hitching as she whimpered and studied her newly formed fingers, wiggling her thumbs.

_Show her how to change back,_ Emily said, hating the collar around her throat. _She’s deaf to us right now, and hasn’t had enough exposure to human speech to conceptualize yours._ And that was heart-breaking. Because, watching her daughter hyperventilate in Spencer’s arms, it was hammered home; this wasn’t how they should be. Their children would struggle because of what had been done to them. Formative experiences had been denied them—early reading, socializing, even just the basics of human speech rather than therian thought-vocalization.

All of this, and a small part of her felt viscerally raw at the cruel thought _you’ll never know how Felicity would have looked._

“Like this,” Spencer was murmuring, placing Riley carefully on the ground and shifting slowly for her. Emily winced. Shifting slowly _hurt_. It was a tedious rearrangement of their bodies. While their brains were adapted to flush their bodies with anaesthetic chemicals as well as switching off the pain receptors in their brains, it was still horrendously uncomfortable to do it step-by-step instead of a smooth transition. Riley went quiet, watching her dad with her head cocked to the side, sitting dog-like on the ground, hands pressed to the dirt. Spencer shifted again; human now. And then once more with a whine he couldn’t hold back, wolf again and slumping over.

Emily shot forward. _Spence!_ she gasped, a cold flush of worry sparking down her spine. His sides were heaving, his mouth open and revealing white gums, and he turned a single rheumy eye on her.

_Tired,_ he said distantly, and then: _Em, Riley…_

Emily looked at her pup right as Riley shifted again with a squeak and then a loud, _Mama, yay!_ at her achievement, the fear and shock of her first shift already fading from her mind. Oliver crept forward cautiously, sniffing at his now-familiar sister with his tail almost wagging.

What should have been one of their proudest moments, and all Emily could feel as she watched them was dazed.

_Don’t leave us again,_ she asked Spencer desperately, looking back at him and hoping he was listening. _Spence, they’re going to struggle so much. They need you. They need you to teach them that there’s more to this—there’s more to life than hunting and sleeping and being wolves. Felicity is gone and it’s not your fault—_

_You blame me a little,_ he responded, trying to struggle upright. She crowded close, shoving him back down and licking at a particularly deep gash on his shoulder. The rest were healing, albeit slowly, but this one was warm under her tongue and smelled of infection.

He was right. She did. _Not rationally,_ she said, slipping once more into his mind so he could see the truth in what she said. A part of her blamed him. A part of her wondered why he hadn’t held on, why he hadn’t fought harder, but that part was quiet and desperate to lay the blame elsewhere. A part of her also blamed Riley—maybe if her pup hadn’t fought her about staying behind, she would have been quicker, would have reached them in time. His mind felt foggy still, shell-shocked and every part strained and hurting, but his attention was on her and that was a start. _Do you think I really blame Riley? Or you?_

_You blame yourself,_ he said finally, studying what she was offering him. The fogginess shifted, and she winced as she felt the weak hunger under it, the side-lined needs of his starving body. _No. It’s not your fault…_

But an irrational part of him blamed her too.

_We need you,_ she said, turning the topic away. If she could remind him he was alive—that his family was still alive and needed him to stay that way—they could survive this. _We need to leave, Spencer._

He cringed away. _No,_ he gasped, and just like that he was gone to her. The fogginess was back, clawing and fierce with anger and pain, crippling him in his illogical grief. _I won’t leave her again. I **can’t** leave her again. _

_She’s dead_ , Emily snapped in a rush of utter vehemence. He cringed and curled, and she was suddenly aware of the other two pups staring at them. But she charged on because his hunger was reminding her how hungry they _all_ were, and she was furious with him for turning away from his living children’s needs: _She doesn’t know a thing anymore, Spencer! She’s safe from this! She’s **lucky!**_

That crashed down between them. He stopped breathing for a moment. Heart skipping two beats and then slamming rapidly to catch up, Emily reeled at the idea that had slipped out there. The whispering notion, _she’s doing better than we are._ She wasn’t hurt or bleeding or hungry or lonely anymore. Not like they were. And along with it, the almost unrecognisable hint of _envy_.

_You don’t mean that,_ Spencer said brokenly. _Emily? You don’t mean that?_

Instead of answering, she walked away. They needed food. She’d get them food.

Nothing else mattered. 

 

* * *

 

She found a dead caribou, half-eaten and more rotten than fresh. Allowing her mind to open to Spencer’s still-lupine one for a moment, she sent him a vivid picture of the catch along with the mental route that she’d taken to get here. He’d be able to follow that easily, along with her scent, bringing the pups to the food. All she received in reply was a soft notion of _okay_ before she closed herself off to him once more, and fell on the corpse.

She’d gorged herself on the flank before she even had time to think about what she was doing, her mind savage with a furious need to _eat._ Her entire being empty except for this singular purpose, even as her stomach rebelled at the rank offal and she almost threw it back up. They could stomach it. None of them would enjoy it, but they _could_ eat it. Benefits of a semi-canid digestive system. They were immune to almost any bacteria that would kill a human, with some notable exceptions.

Single-mindedly focused on survival, she didn’t realize she was no longer alone until she heard the low growl. And she froze, eyes flickering up. Catching the animal’s gaze, barely ten feet from her and monstrous. Liquid brown eyes studied her as great paws carried it slowly forward in a low glide, oddly sneaky for such a large creature.

The grizzly bear growled again, a grunting rumble of a sound, and she calculated. If it charged, she wouldn’t make it back to the safety of the thick trees behind her. She backed away slowly. Then she stopped.

They needed this meat. Carrion or not, they needed it.

She stepped forward, hackles rising and lips curling back, and she snarled. A warning and a challenge.

_Mine_.

Raw fear began to seep down her spine, coiling in the primal part of her brain. _Run,_ it chanted, and she stepped forward again, up onto the dead caribou. She stood atop the corpse, hunching upwards with her body tensed and face vicious. _Mine,_ she snarled and snapped her jaws. _Don’t try anything._

The bear paused. It watched her with predatory eyes, and she slipped out of any notion of humanity. Humanity wouldn’t help her here. She was a wild wolf, and they needed this meat. Her fears didn’t change that. A nudge at her mind. Spencer, probably sensing her terror. And she _was_ terrified. That didn’t stop her from standing her ground. Alone with the bear, and every outcome she’d ever dreaded suddenly possible, as the beast reared and roared and its huge, curved claws became apparent to her.

_Emily!_ Spencer screamed, suddenly running. He’d heard that. He’d felt that.

She stood her ground. The bear advanced.

She leapt forward and snarled, snapping at it and dancing away, a wolf-y dance. _I won’t stand down_ , the dance said, but the bear didn’t seem subdued. On the contrary, it turned with her, something dark and human shifting in its eyes. Shocked, she paused, and brushed its mind.

It was _therian_. Only faintly, barely noticeable, but there was a human glimmer deep within. Lost to the wild part of its mind, completely forgotten, but this bear had once walked as a human.

It charged with a roar, but this time she didn’t turn away. She didn’t run. She didn’t dance around in a challenge or attack it wildly. Those things may have worked, if it was a wild bear and she a wild wolf. But she wasn’t wild. Not completely.

_I’m not alone,_ she said quietly, and the bear faltered.

She howled.

He answered. Not only him, but others. The pups. They sung for her and for their dad and for their lost sister. For a moment, it sounded as though there was a whole pack of wolves moving towards them, their voices distinct and wide-ranging, and the bear’s eyes widened. With a human intelligence, she saw it consider its options as a wild bear wouldn’t. One wolf was a snack.

A pack was a threat.

It fled.

Her family arrived in the quiet come-down, as she lowered herself trembling to the ground and considered what this meant. They only numbered three, Spencer and Riley and Oliver, but they all went straight for her and ignored the meat for which she’d risked her life.

_Mama,_ Riley said stubbornly, huddling close with her little heart beating quickly with a fear she didn’t understand, sides heaving as she panted from the exertion. Oliver did the same, silent and withdrawn, a whispering feeling of _love_ touching her from his muted, grieving mind. And Spencer stood back, watching them all. She waited until she could think again, the adrenaline fading, and then looked to him.

_Back in the land of the living?_ she asked him shakily. _Chosen to live? Because I just faced down a bear to prove I’m not going to lay down and die, Spence. I know you’d have done the same, I just need to know that **you** know that. Felicity is dead. We’re not. _

Silence fell between them. She felt him sigh inwardly, and she _felt_ him quietly step out of the shell of nothing he’d been wearing as a shield against being hurt since the night of the storm.

_I’m back,_ he replied finally, walking to her and brushing his nose against hers. Hurting, still, but determinedly so now. And, with regret and no small amount of bitterness, he added, _We should leave in the morning._

They spent that one last night by their daughter’s grave, leaving nothing behind but the impression of pawprints and the smallest piece of all their hearts. The sunset that night was red and gold and tinged with pink, and Emily hated that this end was morbidly beautiful.

They didn’t mark the spot.

They knew they’d never return.


	25. Impending Illness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity’s death left its mark on them. They were slower, quieter. Oliver was silent unless asked a question. Riley was angry at the world. After a few weeks, they stopped asking for their sister. Emily wasn’t sure if she was relieved or horrified. But they’d lost condition in that haunted time spent grieving by the tiny grave. Emily had lost her milk. Spencer had lost whatever spark had been driving him.

They’d both lost something between them, some tether they’d been relying on unconsciously without ever realizing it was there, until it was gone. She reached for him in the night and he was closed to her, a small span of space between their bodies. The pups filled that space, but it still yawned. She felt alone.

A rabbit evaded her. Hares heard her coming. Deer barely even twitched at the sight of the slow, tired wolf trudging after them. Her paws were heavy, her breathing rough. Exhaustion ate at all of them. They needed to rest and recuperate, but there wasn’t enough game in this area to do so.

And, so, they moved on, sluggishly.

_Emily_ , Spencer called one day. She heaved herself up from where she was dozing by a shallow river, the pups wrestling listlessly nearby in the fading summer heat, and padded towards his voice. Double checking that the pups were following; she couldn’t bear them out of both their sight anymore, even for a moment. _Look_.

She moved to him, and shivered. The rank smell of oil and grease assaulted her, along with a cold metallic scent. Large rocks cut her rough paws and she skittered as she stepped carefully over to where he was standing on the railway tracks with his head lowered, telling the pups to stay by the tree-line.

_Where do you think it goes?_ she asked, peering down the railway line.

_Nowhere good,_ he said grimly. _Home, eventually, I assume. There aren’t enough railway lines in Efisga for it to go elsewhere. It was very probably the track that took us to the compound._ They both shuddered at that, the pups barking as they picked up on their parents’ quiver of shared fear. _But it will likely curve through settlements on this side of the border. We shouldn’t follow it unless we’re certain they aren’t working with the compound wolves._

_Can we be certain of that?_ she asked him.

_No._

They crossed the tracks and kept moving, far away from the distant rumbling of a train. During the day, she hunted. Rarely successful. At night, they slept apart and she tried to pretend she couldn’t hear him crying.

_Daddy sad,_ Riley whispered one night, her dark eyes catching the moonlight. Emily cuddled her close, wrapping that sleepy little mind in love and safety and all those things she struggled to cling to, knowing the pup could see the gaps in the show she was trying to put on.

_It's okay to be sad,_ she told her pup wearily. _We’ve lost something precious._

And Olly howled gently, a broken little _awooo_ that was small and uncertain and stopped quickly.

But the grief faded as their hunger grew. Snatched meals of berries and roots that Spencer dug up weren’t enough. They spent one afternoon in a river as Spencer tried to catch fish with his paws and jaws, one strangely gleefully fun afternoon of the water cooling cracked paws and the pups giggling and even Spencer laughing once.

_What do we do?_ he asked her one day, and she was horrified to realize he was as lost as she was. _We can’t keep up like this…_

_We keep going_ , she said sternly. _Come on. Move._

She bullied and coaxed and pushed and prodded and snarled when they slowed, because the world around them was becoming thicker. Darker trees and shrubs began to sprout from the barren rocky mountain they’d been travelling alongside, and she knew once they delved below into that forest, they’d feed. Plentiful game for even a slow wolf. The pups resented her, Spencer was reluctantly thankful that she never let him flag, and they were so close to some sort of relief. They could find a den, bed down for a week, eat and refuel and reunite; reunite, because there was a distance between her and Spencer that had never been there before as he withdrew not only from showing them how hungry he was, but also from how much he hurt.

This hunt was going well. She caught a hare. Months ago, she would have called it a weak effort and fretted over how they’d divide a single hare among five. Now, horribly, she was relieved as well as sickened that they’d only have to split it between two. With maybe a mouthful for Spencer. She’d find food elsewhere; the pups needed it most.

Padding back to the den, head lowered and panting around the corpse in her mouth, she stepped on a piece of littered bone that bit deep into her paw. With a snarl and a hiss, she dropped the hare and wiggled the bone out, licking at the wound and peering about. Rabbit, not so long dead. She sniffed, smelling rot nearby. Moving towards that scent, she found the fox that had killed it. Half in and out of its den in a frozen paroxysm of death, its muzzle was curled back. Dead. Perhaps a week, maybe slightly less. Something had already been feeding on it, leaving the front half stripped and barely anything edible left.

Nearby, a raven clattered at her. Hopping out of the trees it bickered and crowed oddly, and she ignored it. He’d eaten already. Her turn. The rank meat wouldn’t sit well in her pups’ bellies when there was something fresher for them, and it would give her the strength to find something for Spencer. She dragged the dead fox from the den and ate what little it had to offer her.

As she picked the hare back up, hunger slightly sated and thankful that the raven hadn’t taken the chance while she was distracted to eat it, she glanced at the bird. It didn’t seem scared of her, just stared blankly back with its neck kinked strangely to the side and wings drooping.

Uneasy, she left that place.

_Have you eaten?_ Spencer asked absently as the pups fed on the hare, his jaws working around the hind limb she’d given him.

_Yeah_ , she replied, and sent him the memory of the fox and the staring raven. Not paying attention, he just nodded and kept eating, eyes distant.

The night passed in silence. She slept under a bush with the pups flopped over her paws and tail. Spencer slept alone along a fallen log, his eyes occasionally opening and ears flicking as he kept a wary eye out. They didn’t speak.

The next day, she woke them and she bullied them until they got up and kept moving. Lethargy nipped at their heels and she felt it too, a slow, draining sensation that begged her to lie down, sleep, rest. But the forest called and they trudged down the slope as the sun beat on their backs until finally, finally, they found themselves under a thick boreal canopy. Animals called around them, singing of the death of this summer. Emily took a breath and, for the first time since the storm, felt life steal back into her lungs. Still tired, still sore, but the forest was _alive_ and she saw that life sparking something back into her tired family. Spencer’s paws moved quicker, his mind twitching out of the foggy misery of grief. The pups gasped and squeaked and ran about wildly staring up at the trees above, used to blue skies and scattered trees.

_We made it,_ Emily said, sitting down. _The fucking tundra is gone, Spence, we **made it**. We’re out of the arctic._

_Yes, we did,_ he said, a thin measure of pride in his voice mostly coated in relief, and he tapped his nose against her muzzle. A soft sign of affection.

A withdrawn sign of affection.

She swallowed back a burst of fear at that measured touch and managed not to gasp, _don’t leave me,_ because it felt like that was what he was doing. Not physically… not physically. But something was gone. Leaving. Lost.

_Tired,_ Oliver whispered, swaying on his lanky legs. _Sleep, Mama?_

_Sleep,_ she agreed, and nudged them on. They’d find somewhere to rest. She’d hunt in the morning.

_Thank you,_ someone sent as she dozed off. It might have been Spencer. Maybe she dreamed it. _For not giving up._

She woke to agony. She tried to cry out but her mouth was numb, her tongue thick and useless, and she couldn’t open her eyes. Distantly, she could hear measured breathing around them, but she didn’t know if it was night, day, hours later or just minutes, just that she was sick. She was sick and retching and vomiting with a choked gasp as her body forced her jaws to open.

_Emily?!_ Spencer cried, lurching up as her spine snapped forward and hurled everything she’d eaten into the dirt of their crowded den. She tried to get up, to stagger from their shelter, but her paws and legs ignored her. _What’s wrong?_

_Sick,_ she moaned, finally upright. Two steps forward and she realized her hind legs weren’t following, toppling forward to twin shrieks from the pups as she fell. _Spence, help, my legs…_

_Oh, fuck,_ he said, right as her abdomen cramped and everything cramped with it and she was vomiting again. _Emily, look at me. Look at me. Open your eyes._

_Can’t,_ she whined, falling. Laying in her own vomit, the pups clamouring nearby. She wished they’d be quiet, their shrieks drilling into her skull. _Won’t. Don’t…_ Suddenly, he was there. In her mind and rushing through, a fiercely frantic force. He studied her slowing mental functions and then he tasted her pain and illness and then he turned and dived into the memories she offered to him, too out of it wonder what the fuck he was doing.

He tugged a memory, shared between them. The fox. The raven. The drooping wings and neck and she watched lifelessly as she fed from the fox without noting the bird’s presence.

_Oh no,_ Spencer moaned, and his voice was fear, raw and broken. _Botulism. Emily, it’s botulism._

_Well._ She tried to open her eyes again, but her eyelids were swollen, her chest tightening. _Fuck._

 

* * *

 

His turn to be the bully. He got her up and they made what she was sure was a ridiculous sight, walking slowly along with her head hanging low and her paws and legs dragging. Leaning heavily against him for support, it took them almost an hour just to get up the slope near the den. The pups were a constant chattering presence, skittering around them yapping things like _why Mama slow, why Daddy silly?_

_Do not lie down,_ he kept telling her breathlessly, taking all her weight as he kept shoving her along. _I don’t know if I’m strong enough to carry you._

_You’re not,_ she teased, because now that she was properly awake, she felt conscious. Sore as fuck and horribly aware that the next stage of this was the paralysis completing its assault on her limbs and heading for her respiratory system. _Skinny thing. You’d be a mad wolf for even trying._ She was blind but he kept leading her and they kept going even when the pain and exhaustion felt like it was going to overwhelm her, until they had to test the _I don’t know if I can carry you_ because they didn’t have a choice.

She didn’t know how long it had been. She didn’t know where they were. Her hind legs refused to listen to her; she couldn’t vomit anymore because there was nothing left, but that didn’t stop her body from trying. She knew, distantly, his voice. _When you fall, I’ll carry you,_ he told her. She believed him. She believed him, despite the little voice that whispered to her, _it’d be smarter for him to leave. He’s being stupid. You’re killing them by being weak. A wolf would leave you to die._

_He’s being human,_ she thought vaguely, and wondered if he could hear her. _This is nothing to do with the wolf._

And then she was drifting and dreaming of being carried across a never-changing landscape of nothing until the very end of the world.


	26. Briefly Benevolent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** **

She woke in a tent. It was a small orange thing with her laid out along the back end, several IVs in her forelegs and a small portable heart monitor clipped to her ear. Spencer’s coat was firmly on her body, snuggly around her throat and warming the collar against her skin. Outside, she could hear voices.

_Mama!_ came a cry as Riley realized she was awake, and then the tent buckled as paws struck the side. Emily watched groggily as the puppy-shaped shadow threw itself at the orange wall again, caught midway by a tall humanoid. The tent unzipped, and the Ghost of Spencers Past leaned in. She blinked, narrowing her double vision to focus on the spectre. Clean shaven, dressed in clothes, and with his hair cut and washed, for a second she thought, _wow, what a shit nightmare that was._

But then she tried to stand again to greet him and her legs folded out from under her.

“Antitoxins will clear out any traces of the toxin still in your system,” Spencer said, sliding into the tent and sitting with his legs crossed and Riley wiggling in his lap, reaching out to lay a soothing hand on Emily’s shoulder. The lining of the coat crinkled at his touch. “But it can’t repair any nerve damage done. It should be slight—the doctor said it was in its early stages, so there may only be some slight weakness in your limbs and _maybe_ , only maybe, some small damage to your speech when you’re human.”

_Doctor,_ she breathed, shuddering, and looked around the tent. Ignoring the possibility of nerve damage. _Where are we?_ He couldn’t hear her, but he knew her well enough to know what she was asking. Leaning to the side to let Oliver wiggle past and snuggle, squeaking happily as she nuzzled him and breathed in his scent, Spencer took a sharp breath. She looked at him properly. Without the beard, their struggle to survive wasn’t hidden at all. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken, his mouth gaunt. The short hair only served to illustrate how thin he’d gotten, no longer brushing over that visible collar-bone or curling around the narrow shape of his face.

“I had to, Em,” he whispered, laying himself out so his head was on her flank, his eyes still locked on her face, fingers threading through her thin fur. She breathed and felt his body shift with her as he cuddled tight. “You were dying. I couldn’t let that happen. So I followed the train tracks. Found a settlement and left you just outside. Begged for help, said we’ve been wild, said you were sick. They think we’re eccentric, but they sent a doctor. He’s worried about us. About the kids. Left for a bit and then came back with glucose, food… they haven’t seen this, yet, but I don’t think they’re with _them_. I think they’re safe.” He was babbling, a little overwrought, and she figured a lot had happened while she’d been napping. Fingers pressing on the collar around her throat, hidden by his filthy coat, and she shivered. “They… maybe they can remove it?”

But to remove it, they’d have to show it. And what if they _were_ working with the cult…

They’d end up back there, when they’d come _so far._

“Oh, she’s awake!” boomed a voice, them all twitching with it. A man’s head ducked through the flaps in the tent, beaming at them. The pups whined and tried to huddle under Emily away from the strange beast that was sort of like Dad but not really, Riley growling fiercely.

_Bad cat,_ she hissed, and Emily soothed her gently. But not too much. That cautiousness might still save her life.

“How are you, ma’am?” asked the man, kneeling and revealing the rest of him. Stout and short with a woollen sweater and neat khaki pants, he was the epitome of trustworthy. Around his arm, he wore a red band with a white cross. Openly a doctor. Emily was silent. Spencer’s hand moved quicker, patting her side feverishly as though trying to reassure himself she was still there, still tangible. “That was a nasty bout of sickness. You’re lucky—usually botulism doesn’t knock its victims out. They’re usually conscious throughout, suffering the whole time. Probably the kindest thing your exhaustion and starvation has given you was to sleep through it.” And he smiled, but his eyes strayed to the pups pressed under her belly. “I really must ask again—will you all come back to Junction and with me for _proper_ treatment? You all need care, especially your little ones. We’re not a cage. We’re an outpost for this exact purpose—emergency care for a transient population. There are showers, proper beds, medicine, _food_. You’d do well to come, even for just a little while.”

Emily snuffed him. Therian. Cat, from the scent. Healthy, male, mated, but that scent was thin and worn. She wondered if he had kittens, and if it was the thought of them that was driving his kindness.

She looked at Spencer, at his eyes locked on her. He’d brought her here. He’d carried her when she couldn’t walk. Every animal instinct either of them possessed should have seen him leaving her there and taking the pups, away from the dangerous sickness and his failing mate.

But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t. Whether or not the tentative love they’d grasped cautiously at still remained, that dangerously hot feeling that had driven them to find each other what felt like forever ago… whether that remained or had been broken by their daughter’s death, he remained by her side. And he always would.

She had to trust him again. Not these men, this therian doctor… she didn’t trust them. Didn’t think she’d ever trust strangers again easily. But if they turned on them, if this was a trap, she trusted Spencer to recognise that and stay by her side as they fought their way out of it one more time. This wasn’t biology. It wasn’t the wolves driving them.

It was all him. The same love that had bound them before all of this. Before the season and the pair-bond and the compound and the pups. And she trusted that, even if he didn’t realize it yet.

She nodded.

 

* * *

 

It was bizarre, to walk on legs that didn’t seem to remember how to support her anymore. She trembled, constantly, even as the ravages of the illness faded and let her stomach rest again. She had to sit after even small bursts of activity. The pups fretted. _Mama cold,_ Riley declared, and Oliver followed her endlessly with a blanket dragging from his mouth, trying to put it over her every time she stayed still long enough. They stuck close to her, wary of this strange new world they’d found themselves in.

Junction was a sleepy settlement consisting of a U shape of community buildings backing a smaller section of private cabins. The population was almost entirely transient, the majority made up of therians who were sick or struggling and coming for assistance. A small school to one side boarded teachers who ranged the entire area they were in, travelling to packs and clans of therians living in the wilds who refused to bring their children to the school but wanted their children to learn. Alongside that, there were shops, a hospital, a tiny post office. A bar with its side made up of an enclosed lean-to where therians uncomfortable with sleeping inside could nap away their intoxication. There was a playground. A library. Everything was either free to those in great need, or traded on a barter system that _shouldn’t_ run as smoothly as it apparently did. Emily watched from the window of the suite they’d been given in the recovery house—a strangely designed building that was a cross between a hotel and a hospital, allowing them the privacy of their own quarters while still offering medical assistance—as life went on in this strange place.

Strange because of how familiar it was. If it wasn’t for that fact that people were just as likely to wear their fur as they were their skin, it could be any small-town America. Children played together in groups that didn’t seem to care if they were wolf or bear or cat, or even once a small gaggle of deer shifts who gambolled and kicked their immature hooves and absolutely delighted Oliver as he watched them.

_Is people,_ he gasped, tail wagging wildly. _Is food like people!_

_Not food,_ Spencer managed. _Good lord, no. Not food, Oliver. Children. Just like you. Would you like to play?_ But Emily felt fear thrum through her at the idea of them being out of sight. With others. Strangers. Hackles up, she didn’t say a word but he heard her tension anyway. _They’re safe,_ he soothed her, and she frowned and huffed and finally let him lead them outside, noting how close he stuck to the strange group of young nonetheless.

The place was aptly named. It was a Junction—a junction of lives, intersecting momentarily. It didn’t feel overwhelming because it was rarely the same faces from day to day, beyond those who worked there. She suspected every therian in the area wandered here eventually. It didn’t feel enclosed because every building was open to the world. The windows were wide, the summers were open to the sky, and the doors folded back so the buildings became simply another section of the outside world. It was a place made for paws and for those who feared being cornered, and it was a place of rest.

After a week, she began to sleep deeply. The medication began to kick in. She felt better. The food began to taste like food again instead of bile. They could drink when they wanted. They could do what they wanted _when_ they wanted. If they felt like sleeping, they could. If they were hungry, there was food available to all boarded wolves. Families ate for free whether they were admitted or not. She woke one morning to the blanket folded around her shoulders, the coat gone. Alone but for the pups. She didn’t panic, just hunched under the blanket with one wary eye on the window—still unwilling to show the compound’s mark—until Spencer returned with it washed and mended and replaced it on her with gentle hands that only shook a little.

They gave him clothes. He stopped shaking. The pups began to _play_.

They could heal like this, she realized. If they stayed.

He began to sleep with her again, human with her huddled against his chest and his arms around her. Heart thumping dully against her back. A cautious reconnection.

But that wasn’t the best part.

_Oh my god,_ she said when her traitor legs let her get up and move around more. _Oh my god, Spencer, oh my god oh my god._

He was grinning, leaning against the doorframe as she walked slowly in. The pups peered around his legs, eyes wide as they took in the tiled room with one wall made of mirrors.

_A hot shower,_ she breathed, the shaking returning. _Oh my god. Hot water. Oh my god._ She froze, for a second, transfixed by the sight of a black wolf staring at her from the mirrored wall. Not a familiar black wolf. This wolf was battered and thin, coarse fur hanging from a skeletal frame. Hollow, hard eyes stared at her from a greying muzzle, thin and suspicious and quick to snarl.

She was a stranger to herself. Stunned, she stared.

Spencer broke her transfixion. “Want me to wash your back?” he teased, stripping off his clothes and ushering the puppies inside before closing the door.

_Oh my god,_ was all she could repeat, looking away from the mirrors. There was nothing she could do about that now. _Oh my god_ again as he turned the water to warm and let her slowly sidle under, gasping at the luxurious sensation of the water beating down against her aching body. And again, as the puppies risked the water and began to tumble under her feet, snapping at sprays of water and giggling to themselves. And once more as Spencer joined her, sitting under the water with her between his legs as he rubbed soap into her fur with clever, clever fingers and she tried not to make too many undignified noises. Practically melted into his lap with the lessening of every tension that had assailed her, she revelled in this. Soaking wet and silly, and feeling more than a little alive, she leapt up and shook and stumbled as her back legs collapsed. Yelping, Spencer tried to cover his face from the assault.

_Get Daddy,_ she coaxed the puppies, who were delighted to do just that. Spencer vanished under a wave of waggling puppy tails. Riley overshot and landed on the tiles, standing with a yelp that turned into a shriek as she shifted upright, staggered, and fell over onto her butt, eyes wide.

“Woah, Riley,” Spencer said, catching her with a hand. She clung to it, patting at his fingers curiously. “There’s a girl. Atta ‘girl. Look at you, such a big girl.”

Mouth moving carefully, she tried it out. Emily watched intently. “Da’,” Riley managed, and then laughed. Looked shocked to have laughed. Laughed again and then lost it completely at the strangeness of the noises coming out of her mouth, curling onto the tiles with her black curls soaked to her skull and her hands to her mouth as she cackled helplessly.

Spencer laughed with her, because the sound was contagious.

_Rilly silly,_ Oliver declared her, shaking water from his own sodden coat. _Mama, look how silly._

_Very silly,_ Emily reassured him. _Not a sensible lad like you._

_Like me!_ he barked, rearing up onto his hind-legs and falling backwards with a _yip. Oh no. Uh oh!_

Screams interrupted them. “Oh boy,” said Spencer, pinning Riley down and wiping soap from her eyes as she shrieked angrily. “Guess we get to try washing her hair for the first time.”

_Oh boy,_ Emily agreed, using her paws to help pin the girl from escaping. _Better you than me._

It was a wonderful, timeless moment, and she refused to ever forget it.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t chew on your sleeves,” Spencer scolded Riley, walking with her carefully down the street towards the communal food-hall. She was clinging to his hand, taking tottering steps with his support, trying to eat the jacket off herself that had taken Spencer almost an hour to get on. “Clothes aren’t for eating.”

Riley frowned, stomping her bare foot on the ground in anger. Furious she couldn’t talk, furious that she’d had to have her hair—almost, they’d given up after two hours of being kicked at—brushed and tied back, furious that they’d tried to put _shoes_ on her. Emily could relate to her hatred of shoes. She’d hated them too when she was a pup. Oliver watched it all with an expression of disquiet, as though he was silently planning to never ever shift and expose himself to all this awfulness.

“Daaaaaaa,” she whined, the only word she’d managed to get her clumsy lips and tongue around shaping. “Da Da Da Da _Daaaa_.”

“I don’t care how much you grump at me,” he said swinging her up and letting her scramble onto his shoulders, fingers gripping his hair tight and peering around with fixed interest. “I’m not letting you eat your clothes. Cotton has very little nutritional value.”

_Want up too,_ Oliver whined, drooping with his tail between his legs.

_When you get forced into clothes and shoes, then you get up,_ Emily told him heartlessly, nudging him with her nose. _Until then, deal with it, bucko._

The hall wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty. The kids fell quiet, looking around at the groups of people with big eyes. Emily found a seat on the side benches that let her sit as easily as a wolf as they would a human, and lifted Oliver up. Spencer set Riley by her side, vanishing for food. Tense, her hackles lifted with worry, feeling like every eye was on their odd little family… Emily waited for a shout, a cry, a _hey, we know that wolf._

None came. Just the scent of hot food, the crowded smells of so many strange people all coming together, chattering voices. Spencer returned with food—bowls of soup—and began showing Riley how to use a spoon. Emily ate and watched him getting covered with soup as she listened to the chatter around them, her attention equally divided. Just like keeping a wary eye out for danger as they fed from prey.

_Why is food wet?_ Oliver was asking, poking his nose into the soup curiously and then sneezing it everywhere. _Why ow? Why it ow?_ Emily went to help her son with his first hot meal, before pausing as a snippet of conversation caught her ears.

“Yeah, it’s all they’re talking about down South. Apparently, a pack crossed over two weeks back. Reckon it’s war?”

“A whole pack across the border? That’s insane. There’s no way that happened.”

“What if they’re coming to force us back over? They won’t let that happen, right?”

“Bullshit that’s gonna happen. I’ll rip them apart before I get dragged back to fucken’ America. Them and their black bastard of a leader.”

“You gonna walk the whole way to Sanctuary Town to do that? Reckon if this pack of yours exists, they wouldn’t have gotten past there yet. Not without a damn good reason.”

“They think they have one. Think we’ve been snatching wolves from the States. Bullshit, if you ask me. Those city-slickers can stay over there.”

Emily gasped, audibly. Spencer glanced at her, just in time to get the soup tipped into his lap and for Riley to scream in frustration and shift into a puppy once more, screaming again as she realised she was helplessly tangled in the hated _clothes_.

_Mama Mama **Mama** , _she screeched, thrashing and kicking and squealing. Emily lunged to help, right as Oliver slipped from the bench and landed heavily with the soup bowl toppling on top of his head.

_Uh oh,_ he said, licking chicken from his paws.

They got their soup-covered children back to their rooms and as soon as Spencer pulled the windows shut, Emily lunged. _Shift you bastard,_ she urged him, dancing around him. _Shift!_

He did. _What’s wrong?_ Nose to her muzzle, nuzzling close. Eyes bright despite how ragged his fur was. Not better yet. He still felt distant, Felicity’s death still hovering between them, but she knew under that he was worried, anxious, startled.

Not better yet, no, but they would be now.

_Aaron,_ she choked out, and gasped as a wave of _hope_ slammed into her chest. _Aaron’s in Efisga. He’s come for us, Spencer, he’s come for us! We’re going home!_


	27. Fateful Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** **

“There’s a phone in the post office,” Spencer said, smoothing his hands nervously over the shirt he was buttoning up. Emily paced in front of him, frantic to start moving towards her team. _Aaron’s coming_ hammered her heart with every beat, a giddy, wild feeling that left her reeling. _Home home home._ “It only connects between switchboards in the main settlements—if I can get a message to Sanctuary, I can tell Hotch where we are. They can come get us.” The relief in his expression was stunning; Emily knew, he didn’t think they could go on any longer. Not on foot. Her legs were still wobbly, her breathing hoarse. Riley shifting to a human only emphasized how skinny she was. The doctors still looked worried when they listened to Emily’s lungs. Oliver was finally sleeping through the night without jolting awake and crying for Felicity.

Spencer was very likely right. They’d found their limits, and they’d surpassed them.

_Just need you to come that little bit further, Aaron,_ she thought wryly. _Gonna need you to do that for me._ Shit, they’d cut half the way off for him. He should be pleased.

_What’s a Aaron?_ Riley asked curiously. Emily, in response, sent a feeling of _home_ towards her daughter, laced with bittersweet longing. _Oh,_ replied Riley, already moving onto something more interesting and tangible like chewing on her tail.

_Oh,_ said Oliver thoughtfully, and took that feeling to examine it in the nest of blankets the pups had made in the corner, his face intent as he mused over it.

Spencer was still looking at her, as though waiting for an answer she couldn’t physically voice, some go-ahead. “Are we sure it’s him?” he asked, his voice breathy and thin.

She nodded. It had to be. What other wolf would lead a pack across the border? What other wolf would have the _balls_? But doubt flickered. Would Aaron do that?

Was he wild enough to do that?

_I have to believe it’s him,_ she sent finally, knowing Spencer couldn’t hear her. _Because if it’s not, we lost Felicity for nothing. We’ve lost so much for nothing…_

_Where Felik?_ Oliver asked, perking up at the mention of his sister. Emily whined softly at the hurt and hope in his voice.

_Gone,_ said Riley savagely. _No more. All gone._

Oliver began to cry. Spencer winced, crouching and cuddling his son close, brushing his lips over the puppy’s soft forehead. “Stay with them,” he told Emily, who stepped forward and let him tuck the pup against her forelegs. “I’ll come back.”

And he was gone.

Emily paced. Oliver kept crying. Riley was ratty, shifting back and forth from human to wolf and stomping around the room. Every hour they’d spent in exile, every minute they’d suffered, felt pent up into this moment as the shadows lengthened outside.

_Go play?_ Oliver asked suddenly, perking up as he saw his friends outside. Emily glanced out. Riley paused, a wolf at the moment and looking just as plaintive as her brother.

_Okay,_ she said finally, because Spencer would be able to find them no matter what if he took wolf shape. The coat hid her collar and the pups stuck by her side as she sauntered outside, nudging them in the direction of the other children and pacing edgily around the confines of the playground while they raced back and forth through the tunnels, shrieking together. The other parents kept their distance.

The playing turned rough. Oliver squealed as he was bitten by a bigger pup. Seconds later, Riley attacked with a vicious series of snarls, Emily diving and grabbing her furiously over-protective daughter out of the scrum of bickering children as other parents swooped in. They retreated from the playground, paws heavy on the dewy ground as Emily scolded them. Kicking and shrieking in anger, Riley refused to be scolded, paws and rump dragging as Emily carried her from there with her little mouth turned up in a snarl. She writhed and she whined and Emily thought furiously of dropping her on her grumpy little butt if she kept it up, right as she twisted in Emily’s grip and grabbed the coat in her sharp puppy teeth, hauling it tight against Emily’s throat. It dragged against the collar, bit down tight, and Emily choked. Dropped Riley with a barked yelp and cuffed her with her paw as the pup let go of the torn coat and cringed down, tail between her legs and ears flat.

_No!_ Emily scolded. _We don’t do that! Riley, look at me. You come when you’re told, do you understand?_

_Bad cat,_ hissed Riley, still cringing. _Mama a bad cat. Make Felik gone._

Emily froze.

_No, don’t want Mama,_ Riley kept going. _Want Daddy. No, no!_ She began to wail, short puppy howls that turned all eyes towards them. Emily winced at the sudden horrific spotlight feeling of being the centre of attention.

_Do you need any help?_ a yellow-coated wolf asked, stepping forward and stopping a respectable distance from Emily and her two pups. _I can go get a pack member if you need help?_

_No thank you,_ Emily replied with forced politeness. _My mate is busy. I’m just fine._

_Oh, it’s no problem. They’re just outside the town. It isn’t much of a run._

Emily blinked. Wait, what?

_Pardon?_ she asked, lifting her head from Riley and staring at the yellow wolf. The animal shifted uncomfortably, her paws digging into the ground. _Who is just out of town?_

Nodding to Emily’s throat, the wolf continued: _Your collar. The North Slope wolves wear those, don’t they? They’re in town collecting the last delivery before the railway stops travelling up north for winter. You’re not with their pack?_

Emily breathed. Everything was slow. Loud. Muffled. She could hear her heart beating, air rasping through her partially open mouth, the pups sniffling by her paws. Trees whispered behind her. _We’re here,_ they laughed with the shuffle of their dying leaves. _Just like winter, always coming. We’ve found you._

_Mama?_ one of her pups asked, but Emily wasn’t breathing anymore but backing away, bristling, her legs numb and her body trembling. _Mama, why?_

_Find Daddy,_ she said or gasped or choked. Fear. What she was feeling was fear. Her body was burning with watchful eyes but she couldn’t turn because they’d be right there, right behind her, crawling towards her with their darts and their ice and their room and— _Find him! Now!_

They ran, tails between their legs and eyes mad with fear from the panic she was slamming down on them. But she couldn’t pull it back, couldn’t control it, because it was raw and painful and destroying her. Wolves were calling to her. Her name, some of them that knew it, all of them worried, some of them shocked, but they didn’t know. They couldn’t know. She ran on shaking legs to find her mate, up the middle of that township’s single street with her pups fleeing in front, and with all the danger in the world surrounding them.

Past the school. Past the bar. They turned a corner to where the post office would be, and they stopped.

Emily stopped. Stared.

And Ethan stared back, his eyes huge in his tawny-masked face. Almost face to face with him, she knew he’d been standing there shell-shocked with her scent in his nostrils. Or Spencer’s. Either way, he’d tracked them. He’d found them. He was here. She could smell the desert in his fur. _No,_ he said. And then, louder: _No! You can’t be here—you’re supposed to be dead!_

She couldn’t work out if that was a threat or not, stumbling backwards. She had to run. They had to run. _Spencer!_ she screamed, and the pups screamed with her. _Daddy!_

Spencer rocketed out of the post office, skidding to a stop as his eyes fell on Ethan. He’d heard their squeals. Paper crushed in his hands, and there was a long, frozen moment where they did nothing but look at each other.

_You have to run,_ Ethan whispered.

And then Spencer shoved past his brother, sprinting down to her and grabbing her by the ruff, above the collar. “Come on,” he gasped, and began to run. “Run!”

They ran. To the room. Someone shouted behind them. She didn’t look back to see who it was, because she knew it was only a matter of time before they were hunted.

She was right. Spencer ripped his clothes from his body and shifted. They didn’t even make it to the room before a grey-backed wolf appeared on their heels, terribly familiar with his salt-and-ice laced scent.

_Kidnappers!_ he howled after them. _They took our pups! Those pups are ours!_

_Don’t stop running,_ Spencer told her and told the pups, and there was an Aaron-sharp bite of command to that that none of them could deny. _No matter what, keep going!_

What followed was nightmarish.

They ran. They didn’t stop. They had the benefit of being the pursued—they knew from long-experience all those lives ago when they’d been agents instead of victims, the pursuers could never move as quickly as those they chased could. But they had pups. Emily’s body was still weak. They numbered less than their hunters.

Despite this, they ran and they didn’t let it slow them. They ran until they fell. They slept, and then they ran more. The ground vanished under their bleeding, aching paws. The pups cried and sobbed and faltered and then fell silent, tongues hanging from open mouths and eyes blurry with tears. But they kept up.

Behind them, wolves howled. No matter how many days they ran, that howling didn’t stop.

_We’re coming,_ said the howls, just like the trees had promised. _We’ll find you._

Emily felt a little mad and knew Spencer felt the same. Like rabbits in a trap, racing in circles. They could barely stop to drink, couldn’t think to see what direction they ran. Didn’t have the breath to even whisper, _Did you contact Aaron? Is help coming?_

Couldn’t bear it if the answer was no.

Resting was a mistake. Their bodies seized up, their muscles screaming with the stress they’d placed them under. The pups were silent and shocked at the pain they’d never before felt in their young lives, just whimpering softly. Emily pulled back into her mind, letting the wolf-y part of her brain deal with it. The wolf part would keep going. It knew what survival cost. Spencer was silent as well, his sides heaving as he panted frantically. When the howls slipped closer, he goaded them up.

_Move,_ he told them. And he kept going. _Move, hurry up, go go go go._

_If you slow down, they’ll catch us._

_They’ll catch the pups._

_We’ll be taken **back**._

She knew he was doing anything to stop her from collapsing, but that didn’t stall the absolute fear his words inspired. She moved. And they lost days to this agonising race against their own bodies. Knowing they’d have to stop eventually, especially as her breathing began to rasp and wheeze. Especially when the pups began to follow, coughing thinly with runny noses and weeping eyes. As heads drooped and eyes glazed and as all four of them began to limp more than run.

In the end, it took them four days to go from the relative calm of Junction to laying curled together on the slope of a river, too broken to go on. Emily tasted copper. She coughed, and looked to the water wistfully. The pups were silent and listless next to her.

Water dripped suddenly onto her mouth. Tongue flicking over damp lips, she rolled and found Spencer wet and trembling over top of her. Barely able to think, she licked at his wet fur. Found some remaining energy and dragged herself up, letting him guide her to the river, before going back for the pups.

_We’re done, Spence,_ she said, dropping her muzzle to the water and letting it cool her over-heated skin. The coat still hung from her body, the only thing they still had left to them besides each other. She was too hot in it. He was probably cold without it. Neither had the energy to trade it over. _We’re done. We can’t. We’re too hungry. Too tired._

Spencer was quiet. And he wasn’t the only thing that was. She listened for his answer and she realized what they weren’t hearing.

_They’ve stopped,_ he breathed, flopping down. _I think… I think we lost them._

But whether they had or not, it didn’t matter. They couldn’t feel relief or pleasure or anything but pain. There was only one thing left that they could do.

They slept.

The next day they made it barely twenty feet before having to stop. Every part of Emily’s body burned. The pups cried, constantly.

_We hurt, we hurt,_ they howled. _Stop it, Mama. Stop it!_

But there was nothing they could do but wait it out. They drank water. They struggled forward. Two more days passed and stiff muscles barely loosened; Emily licked and licked at her pups’ paws to try and stave off infection from the cracked and filthy sores that covered them. Her own she left, barely able to summon the energy to care that she was hurt too. They coughed and the coughing sunk deep and turned wet and barking.

Spencer hobbled away, his mind stinking of pain and stubbornness.

_Where are you going?_ she asked him.

_To hunt. We need to eat. We’ve run through our reserves; our bodies didn’t regain enough from the time we were at Junction. We’re burning muscle to survive. It’s why we’re getting sick._

_I’m not sick,_ Emily lied, and coughed, tasting copper again. _I should hunt. You’re shit at it._

Spencer glanced back at her. _If you can stand, you can hunt,_ he said, and made it sound like a challenge. One she failed.

And he came home empty-jawed.

Everything slowed. Days. Nights. Distantly, Emily was aware of Spencer wondering out loud if they should turn back. Let themselves be recaptured. Looking at her struggling pups as exhaustion gave way to a cruel hunger, Emily wondered if he was right. If captivity was better than death.

She wasn’t sure it would be.

They crossed the path of moose that stared them down without fear, more than a match for two almost-starved wolves. Despite knowing this, they lost an hour to padding after the group and hungrily plotting increasingly desperate ways of getting hold of one of them. Rationality won out over desperation and they turned away from that fatal temptation. A single hoof would shatter bones, and they weren’t under any illusions that their pups could survive without them.

_People have been known to last up to seventy days without food,_ Spencer said at one point, now carrying Oliver. Emily carried Riley, horrified by how light and limp her baby was. A hare mocked them. Emily chased it. Was it still the same day? She wasn’t sure anymore.

_How many days has it been?_ she asked him, and he looked at her oddly.

_Since what?_

She didn’t know.

Another hare escaped. As did another. The next she caught and tore apart with a savagery she wouldn’t remember in the relief of the meat. The pups smelled the meat and lunged for it, bickering and snarling and fighting over the smallest scraps. Emily and Spencer stalked around the brawl with their fur on end and their hearts thudding, trying to pretend they weren’t half tempted to grab the meat for themselves. When the pups were done and there was nothing left, the adults ate the bones and tried not to look too desperate as they licked blood from their pups’ fur.

He caught a bird. Their turn to eat.

She grabbed it from him and they fought, snapping, over a broken wing. She won and he slunk away. She ate until it hurt despite having barely eaten at all, throwing up and eating more still. The pups tried to grab at the meat. She bared her teeth at them. _Mine_ , she growled. Bellies grumbling, they cringed away.

Distantly, she knew they were losing themselves to this frightful hunger.

That night, she was sorry for how she’d acted. Cuddling her babies close, she found the part of her that was still Emily and sang to them. They listened. Spencer listened too, sitting across the clearing with his ears perked with interest. And then they were asleep.

_What do we do?_ Emily asked him as the pups dozed. _We’ll die if we keep going._

_I don’t know where we are,_ he admitted. _I sent the message. But… we ran and we ran and I can’t even think to calculate how far we’ve come. I don’t even think we’re going in a straight line anymore, we’ve been here before. I’m sure of it._

She thought that he might be right about that.

_What if it wasn’t even Aaron?_ she sighed, and Spencer was silent. _We’ve lost everything. Felicity, our homes, our way… you…_ The last she hadn’t meant to say, but it slipped out and he looked at her oddly.

_But I’m right here?_ He sounded worried, standing and limping over to her and nuzzling at her fur. She gasped at the touch, the first time he’d touched her with nothing but affection, without having a reason to, since…

Since Felicity.

_No, you’re not,_ she said. And admitted what she feared: _I lost you when Felicity died. You’re quiet now. Muted. Our pair-bond is thin, so thin. I can’t feel you half the time. You don’t love me anymore—_

_That’s not true!_

_—you barely love **anything** anymore, Spence. Your grief is eating away at you. And this life, this life lets you be less and hide from it… so you’re letting it. _

He was silent, stunned. She touched at their bond in her mind, the single steady thing she’d had to count on since that night they’d fled into a blizzard. And everything she’d said was true; it was less. He was letting it slip away. She almost understood that. The pair-bond was them. It was everything they’d suffered and cherished together. It was the dens in the mountains; it was the night they’d been forced together; it was cupping their newborn pups in his hands as they breathed for the first time; and it was lowering a stiff body into an unmarked grave.

With an eidetic memory, there was none of it he could escape.

He licked her, once. Then again. And then, under the moonlight, he leaned close and groomed her sweat-marked fur with a delicate care that left her breathless. She felt, for the first time in a long time, treasured and loved and safe, and knew all three were an illusion.

_I could never not love you,_ he said finally, and stood with a groan to limp away. _No matter what we are to each other._

_Where are you going?_ she asked around the thump of her heart, because she was sure he was fleeing her in this moment.

_To hunt,_ was his simple reply. _I won’t watch my family starve while I’m still alive to stop it from happening._

She let him go. Tomorrow, she’d join him. Push through the pain and the foggy disconnection. They’d live. Whether it was Aaron or not; she refused to give up.

_I refuse…_ she thought softly, and then fell asleep.

And woke to a starburst of pain that left her reeling. She launched up, the pups screaming with her, and she realized she was screaming too. Roaring with pain and shock; it took too long to realize it wasn’t her pain.

_Emily!_ he cried once, and then screamed again. Another burst of pain and he was lost to her.

She ran to him. Through skeletal trees and autumn leaves, she ran and she ran and the pups followed, and she burst out to find him staggering upright, his eyes huge and unfocused. Jaws gaping, lips curled back, and she reeled as a bloodied, bellowing caribou lashed out one more time and sent her mate sprawling with a squealing yelp of pain. She winced at the impact. _Thunk_. Hoof on flesh as it drove into his chest, and the sound was meaty and sickening.

_I’m fine!_ Spencer snarled, struggling upright once more despite the blood on his fur that might be his or the buck’s. _I’ve hurt it, we can kill it! Help me!_

It took two seconds for her to make her choice. The caribou bellowed again, antlers clattering against a tree trunk as it backed away. It was healthy, male, in its prime. Huge. Despite this, blood pumped hot and fast from a gorge in its throat. It would die. It was dying. She smelled the blood, and she attacked.

The creature lurched for her but she was fast and determined. A hoof almost crashed into her shoulder and she barked a challenge and danced away. It turned and tried to flee, terrified by her refusal to fear it.

A flicker of black and another wolf appeared, fast as lighting and nipping at the animal’s hocks. The caribou screamed and turned, but the pup was gone, cackling into the bushes. Before the beast could flee, its path was blocked. The second pup was smaller, tawny, but it snarled and snarled and crept forward on dangerous paws.

Panicked, the buck turned again and Emily was waiting. She leapt and they went down together, teeth in flesh and tearing until the bellowing stopped and the breathing stopped too. Dead. Almost dead.

They didn’t wait for it to die completely before they fell on it ravenously.

They ate and ate and still there was more. She stopped to tend to her mate’s injuries, licking at a swollen lump by his ear and a painful gash across his white-blazed chest. He winced at even her gentle touch.

_I’m fine,_ Spencer told her again, turning to her and examining her with soft eyes inside a bloody mask of fur. There was pain in his voice, a groggy sleepiness, but nothing overwhelming. Mostly awe and relief: he knew, this catch was enough to feed them for almost a week. _You were amazing, Emily. Absolutely amazing. And we’ll live because of it._

_Because of you,_ she corrected him, because he’d almost taken down a creature eight times his size by himself. _You mad wolf. Completely batshit. Dave would be proud._

Spencer laughed, jaws open and eyes glittering. _Well,_ he said. _Won’t that be something to look forward to when we get home, then? Telling him all about it._

_I can’t wait,_ she said, and meant it.


	28. Briefly Breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Eight: Chapter Twenty-Eight to Thirty-One**
> 
> ****

_Daddy sick._

Emily woke with the snap-attention of the summoned mother, blinking up at Riley. The pup sat with her paws on Emily’s chest, peering into her eyes.

_What?_ Emily asked, quickly looking around and spotting Oliver sitting quietly by her haunches in the dig-out she’d made under a bush near the carcass of the caribou. Both pups accounted for, she shook sleepiness from her brain, heavy with her body trying to adjust to its sudden meal, and sat up slowly.

_Daddy sick,_ Riley repeated, and Emily heard it. The gagging sound of vomiting from outside.

Panic bit at her brain, remembering her own recent illness. But it wouldn’t be that. The kill was fresh. Her own stomach lurched at the repeated explosive retches, reminding her that they’d eaten a lot and eaten quickly. Both pups had been ill before sleeping—it was likely just that.

Despite this logic, she slipped out from the dig-out, telling the pups to stay put, and padded over to her mate. He was hunched on the dirt, vomit-splattered with his back arched and eyes staring. Hind legs bowed and forelegs stiff, he didn’t look…

He didn’t look like he was just ill from overeating.

_Spence,_ she murmured, and he swung around to look at her. _You okay?_

Blink. He blinked. Gawked. Whined.

Tried to stand and threw up again.

_Ate too much,_ he said finally, slumping onto the mucky dirt. She winced for his fur. _Just leave me. Sleep. Just… sleep._

Uneasy, she retreated to the bush and kept a wary eye on him.

He’d be fine.

He had to be.

 

* * *

 

She was helping Oliver shake ants from the leg of the caribou he was chewing on, when there was a low growl from behind her. Recognising Spencer’s _enough_ growl, she ignored it. Riley, who’d never taken ‘enough’ as enough, kept nipping at her dad’s ears, trying to goad him into playing. Spence had woken up after a few hours broken sleep, groggy but no longer vomiting, and had spent the last few hours silently curled up by the trunk of a tree just watching them.  Emily was just relieved that the pups were _playing_ again, some spark back into their eyes and their minds. She could even deal with Oliver’s incessant _why_ questions, and Riley’s irritating habit of nipping for attention.

Another growl.

_Riley, leave Daddy alone,_ Emily called back, knocking an ant from Oliver’s nose with a paw. Olly sneezed, giggling at the tickly feeling. _He’s resting._

_Chasey!_ Riley yelled. _Please!_

_No,_ Spencer replied shortly, moving around so his back was to her, his tone acidic. Emily glanced at him, startled. He’d never been so… abrupt with her.

Riley faltered, unsure of what the sharpness in his tone meant, settling back and shifting into a blood-smeared toddler with her filthy hands set on the dirt, sitting doglike and examining her dad. Emily sighed, standing to go and collect her. “Da Da!” she demanded, and grabbed at Spencer’s chest, fingers winding through fur and tugging. Emily winced, remembering the hoof slamming down right where Riley’s hand was pulling.

_Riley!_ she barked, leaping forward, right as Spencer squealed with pain and lashed around. Riley screamed and Spencer arched up, snarling and bristle-backed, his expression unfamiliar.

Blood ran from a shallow bite on their daughter’s arm.

_Spencer!_ Emily shouted, horrified, stepping between them. _What the fuck!?_

Confusion flickered over his features. He blinked at the blood, their screeching daughter who shifted in terror and huddled on the floor as a bow-legged pup. Emily could smell piss and fear.

_I—_ he managed, and then staggered. _Urgh…_ His eyes flickered, glazing and closing and opening again. He coughed, shook his head slowly, and slumped.

Emily stared at him.

_Hey,_ she said, needing to help Riley but absolutely frozen by sharp-laced _terror_ at the broken way he was laying. _Spencer? Hey. Look at me._ She nudged his leg, carefully, watching his hazel eye shutter open and examine her blearily. Shuffling around to his front, she examined him carefully. Light caught his eyes, the uneven pupils, the whiteness of his gums. _Well, fuck. How concussed are you?_

He just stared at her. She glanced again at Riley, who’d fallen quiet. Oliver was licking at her leg, revealing the smallest tear along the limb. Spencer’s canine had caught her, but it wasn’t severe. Good. She could focus on him for now.

_Where are we, Spencer?_ she tried, nudging close. That was probably a bad question, she realized, trying again with, _Do you remember what happened?_

_Running,_ he slurred. Now she was aware, she could hear how thick his voice was. _We were… running._

_Do you remember hunting?_

He blinked. Closed his eyes. _You’re the hunter,_ he mumbled, _I’m no good. Useless._

Oh boy.

She took a deep breath. _I don’t know how to fix this,_ she told him nervously. _I can’t let you sleep, I don’t think. Or was it the other way around… should you sleep? You’re going to be okay, right? This is going to heal?_

He was silent.

 

* * *

 

They stayed by the caribou for three more days. For the first, she kept Spencer awake, rousing him every time he drifted. He was vicious, snarling, flipping from frantic to furiously irritable every time she woke him. Eventually, unsure if she was doing the right thing, she let him sleep.

He woke headachy and listless but himself, and she could breathe again.

_We’ll try and find our way to Sanctuary,_ he told them firmly, grooming Riley with a gentle tongue, miserable that he’d lashed out at her. Riley, with typical toddler attention-span, didn’t even seem to remember the incident. _If we head south, we might find roads, or the railway again. Riley, turn to your left so I can clean there. Do you know which way is left?_

Riley turned right.

_No,_ Spencer corrected gently, leaning his muzzle against her little chest. _Feel this? Feel the tick tick of your heart? That’s your left. Left to the heart._

Riley giggled, turning left and touching her nose to his chest. _Daddy heart,_ she declared. _Tick tick._

_That’s right. Just like a watch, that never stops. Not for your whole life, not once._

And on the third day, they set off. Bellies full and spirits high, they had a goal and hope for rescue. The forests behind them were silent. No howls chased them. Maybe they could do this.

Two hours in, Spencer staggered to a stop. _Have to rest,_ he mewled, and curled up small. She hovered, worried, over him as he slept frighteningly deeply. Normally the first to snap awake at the smallest sound, he slept through even the raucous sounds of Riley finding a crow and attempting to catch the noisy bird. Clouds rolled in overhead. They brought with them a bitter chill that chased the pups back to huddle under her belly. Spencer woke as night fell, and they continued.

_How are you feeling?_ she asked him, and he shrugged.

_Fine,_ he lied. They moved slowly on.

After another two hours, he had to rest again. The cold folded around them. Their paws were silent on a wet carpet of autumn leaves. The pups were nervous, twitchy as the brisk wind scraped bare branches against each other and cast scratchy shadows down on the ground they walked. Yellow clouds scudded across a hazy moon. Spencer was silent, his head bowed, his tail limp. Paws dragging heedlessly as he followed Emily, the gap between them increasing as he slowed further. In the silent moments when the wind quietened, Emily could hear his breathing rasping.

In the distance, a single howl floated.

They both froze. The pups began to whine with fear.

_Is it them?_ Emily breathed, unable to tell through the thump of blood in her ears.

_I’m not sure,_ Spencer replied, limping forward. He pressed against her side, shivering and thin, and she licked at the scabby bloodied fur across his chest where the caribou’s hoof had split the skin. _It’s whelping season. That might slow them if they have litters being thrown._

Emily shook her head. _Like they’d care,_ she said bitterly. _They don’t care for their litters, only for their fucking species. Pups are a means to an end._

Spencer eyed her in the dark, but said nothing. Soft rolls of pain reached her from his mind, a throbbing, aching agony. She winced. They kept moving. Sore and weary and running on nothing; their bellies may have still been full, but they had very little else to work with.

_I sent the message,_ Spencer said finally, as they worked their way tediously down a scrubby ridge of trees. His voice _hurt_ , it was laced with so much pain, and she wanted to tell him to stop talking. She didn’t. If he was telling her this, he had his reasons. _To Aaron. If that was him. They only have rudimentary technology here, did you know? Telegram, essentially. The compound had better resources. I was waiting for a reply when… Ethan…_ He trailed off. _I’m older than Ethan. First born. He hated that. Kept telling everyone he was the oldest, clearly, since he was… bigger…_ And he stopped again, his voice thin and confused, panting.

_I think we should rest,_ she said carefully, recognising the confusion slipping into his thoughts. The pups were silent, as they were often these days—picking up on her anxious fear and Spencer’s disorientation.

_No, I… I had to tell you something. Something. I don’t remember…_

_Tell me when we wake up._ Exhausted, she found a tree and scraped out a hollow at the roots. _Come on. Tomorrow’s a new day._

_Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree,_ Spencer mumbled, curling tight into the half-dug hollow. The pups slipped up next to him, silent little wraths that should have been so much younger than what they were, huddling under his chin and against the chest where his heart beat dully. Emily watched them, the age in their eyes and the broken promise of innocence, and closed her eyes against it all as she lowered herself in front of them. A solid wall of black fur; protection against the wind that blew cold against her body.

It was the least she could do for him.

It was the most she could do for any of them.

 

* * *

 

The rain was the thin, drizzly kind that dripped from noses and into ears and left Emily grumbling and the puppies giggly with the thrill of chasing each other through puddles. It also brought frogs, which were surprisingly tasty, and which Riley turned out remarkably adept at catching.

And Spencer seemed fine. Oh, she knew he wasn’t. But he was pretending and she was pretending, and it was really all they could do.

_Story!_ Oliver demanded, bouncing up with his tan fur slicked brown by the rain and his hazel eyes alive. Muddy paws danced in the dirt. _Daddy, story!_

Spencer looked at her, his whiskers twitching. _A man listened all night to a nightingale’s song and was so delighted by what he heard that the next night, he captured the bird—_ Spencer began, his voice soft. He paused on the end, swallowing a wet breath down, and Emily shivered, shedding beaded water from her thick fur and the waterproof coat.

_What bird?_ asked Riley, appearing with half a frog in her mouth.

_Why bird?_ queried Oliver, but Spencer continued, uncharacteristically ignoring them.

_“Now that I have caught you,” the man told the bird, “You shall always sing to me”,_ Spencer continued. Emily knew this story. Sef had used to tell her this story.

_“We nightingales never sing in cages,” said the bird,_ Emily said quietly. The pups trilled in shared delight that she was joining in, a soft thrum of thin affection touching her from Spencer’s distant mind. They walked as they spoke, mud from the track they followed splashed up their legs and bellies.

_“Then I’ll eat you,” said the man. “For what use is a bird that will not sing for me?”_ Spencer coughed damply, shaking his muzzle. Emily watched his chest heave as he struggled to breathe for a moment, his fur matted and soaked through without the double coating she enjoyed.

_“Please don’t kill me, but let me free,” begged the nightingale,_ Emily continued, sending a picture of the bird in all its drab brown and cream to the entranced puppies. The bird in her mind flittered and panicked in its gilded cage, black eyes sharp. _“I know plenty of things that may be of interest to you, secrets of the birds and the beasts that no man knows.”_

_Let bird go!_ demanded Riley.

_Fly bird_ , Oliver added.

_And the man let the bird loose, for the man was greedy and wanted all the world for himself,_ Spencer said, pausing for a moment and lowering his head before plodding determinedly onwards. Emily touched his shoulder with her nose, a soft nuzzle. _The bird flew to a branch, far out of reach, and said…_

He began to cough, shaking wheezes that seemed to shorten with every inhale. Emily leaned against him, the coat crinkling between them, water dripping from his drooping whiskers and his ears all flicked back.

_And he said,_ Emily continued, pushing her own fear away and changing the mental image to a bird flying free, laughing, _“Never believe a captive’s promise, that’s one thing to remember, Mr. Man. Here’s another—keep what you have! And a third piece of advice… sorrow not over what is lost forever.” And then the bird flew away, and the man was left empty-handed and with no wild song to listen to._

Spencer had stopped coughing, leaning against her with his lungs rattling in his chest.

_Rilly eat bird,_ Oliver was announcing smugly.

_No! I won’t!_ Riley retaliated, the argument devolving quickly into wrestling in the mud. Emily watched them, Spencer heavy against her side, breathing slowly.

_How bad is it?_ she asked finally, softly, a private thought just for him.

_What?_ he asked, playing dumb. Switching her stare around to him, he winced. _Em…_

_Tell me._

The pups bickered. The wind picked up in the distance, trees grinding together.

_I think my lung is lacerated,_ he said after a pause long enough she was sure she must have gone deaf. And his voice was thick with regret. _And…_ She waited. _I’m losing vision in my right eye. It’s like a curtain falling over my peripherals. Gradual._

Now, finally, she looked at him. Shivering with more than just the cold. Suddenly, the wilds around them felt very big, Sanctuary even further away. Aaron a forgotten lifeline.

_How long do we have?_ she asked, because he wouldn’t have hidden this from her if he didn’t think it was going to be…

Fatal.

_I don’t know,_ he admitted heavily, tucking his chin over her shoulder. She felt, through her leg, his body struggling to breathe. _I’ll keep losing breath as my lungs fill with fluid until… they can heal. Sometimes. With rest. I think?_

_Then we rest,_ she demanded, turning on him. _No shit, of course we fucking rest, Spencer! We don’t keep going until you drown in your own—_

Behind them, a wolf began to howl.


	29. Swan Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You need to leave me behind._

She was fucking _sick_ of hearing him say that. Fucking sick of it. In fact, she was _so_ sick of it, that she was considering grabbing him by his stupid ear the next time he said it and shaking him stu—

_Emily, are y—you… listening?_

She whirled on him with her hackles up and her teeth bared, roaring into his stupid, scruffy face.

_Shut up!_ she screamed, and the wolves hunting them screamed along as the wind ripped the leaves around them into a frenzy. _Shut the fuck up, Spencer!_

_Mama,_ Riley whimpered, hiding from Emily’s fury under her dad’s sheltering paws, only the shivering rear end of her poking out, tail tucked low. Oliver vanished behind her with a squeak.

Spencer lowered his head to wheeze at his pups, nuzzling them with desperate, needy affection.

And the wolves howled.

_I’m slowing you down,_ Spencer said finally into the painful silence. And he was. They couldn’t deny it. The wolves that had caught their scent were catching up fast; Spencer couldn’t run without collapsing. Two days since they’d caught that first fateful howl on the wind, and Emily knew this was the endgame.

And they were losing.

_I won’t leave you,_ she said finally, ignoring the voice in the back of her mind that was wild and sharp and whispered _a wolf would leave him._ She wasn’t being a wolf right now. She was being Emily Prentiss, Spencer Reid’s mate and friend and sometimes lover; the mother of his children; an agent of the FBI; she was being everyone she’d left behind. She was being all these things, and she was going to get him home or she was going to die trying. But her pups shivered by his paws, black and tan and the sum of everything that had been done to them, and if they were caught…

_If you fall, I’ll carry you,_ she finished. Heavy. Resolute. It was likely to come true, sooner rather than later. His lungs bubbled. His gums were whiter than his teeth. The whites of his right eye were red; she knew he was hiding that he was now blind in that eye, or close enough to it. _We do this together, Spence._

_They come first,_ he gasped, limping after her. _They always come first_.

_And they need you. We’re nothing without you, do you understand? You live for **them.**_

He nodded blankly, probably without even hearing her, and stumbled behind her. And the pups trailed along into the wild night, as he died quickly and they died a little alongside him.

Pink light painted the horizon. Morning. It loomed closer, over the treetops to their left, painting the trees with tips of dusky gold. Their breath fogged as they followed a thin deer trail around the side of a verge and came out suddenly on wide open space. Emily blinked. The forest had ended suddenly. What lay ahead was a yellow and green and red expanse of endless grasses and low-lying trees sweeping off into the distance. Blue-purple clouds crowded the distant sky, fat with rain. A deer looked up and saw them and leapt away.

_Big,_ said Riley uncertainly, dwarfed by the shifting grasses and low, moaning wind.

_Open,_ Emily breathed, horror dripping into her spine and down her body. _It’s so open. They’ll see us for miles._

_Then we better get miles in front,_ Spencer said firmly, and stepped out onto the prairies.

Oliver faltered, thin and weak with the hunger that nipped at them again. _It pretty, Mama,_ he said softly, laying down and sniffing at a bug marching across the boggy ground. Emily picked him up. _Can we see the pretty?_

_We’ll see the pretty, love,_ Spencer reassured him, licking his little pink nose. _Come on. Let’s go._

Time meant nothing on the prairies. There was no goal to aim for, just a distant skyline that never grew closer. Rolling hills disguised the distance they’d travelled; their path through the grass was painfully visible by the bent and broken bracken behind them. There was game, plenty of it, but no time to stop for a hunt. Unless something ran right into their waiting mouths, the starving would continue. They walked onwards wearily to an uncertain afternoon, the sun finally rising above them and into its proper place in the sky instead of doing its usual strange, arctic dance around the horizon. But it brought no heat, just a heavy, humid air that was hard enough for Emily to breathe through, let alone Spencer and his failing lungs.

When the sun was at two o’clock, he collapsed. She picked him up.

She carried him as his heart hammered crazily against her back, staggering only slightly under his thin weight. His heart wasn’t a watch right not, not _tick ticking_ calmly like he’d taught Riley it would, but galloping like a horse running from the wolves that chased it. She listened and counted each broken gallop and hoped it wouldn’t stop.

_You need to leave me behind,_ he wheezed groggily. She ignored him. Idiot. And onwards she paced, her pups at her paws and her mate on her back, eyes fixed forward. Fuck the world. This was _her_ life, and she refused to live without him in it.

_Emily,_ he whispered, an hour later. His voice so quiet even to her mind she barely caught it. But she turned, looking to where his left eye was aimed. Looking to the ground they’d left behind; the distant black dots moving across the crest of a low hilltop.

Their pursuers had found them.

_Don’t wanna go in the cage,_ Oliver said suddenly, with sharp fear and terrifying awareness for a boy who was—two? Was he two now? He could very well be, she had no idea what month it was anymore.

_Birds don’t like cages,_ Riley said, slinking down. Emily was frozen, staring at those faraway wolves. If they were wolves. They could be anything. _I’m a bird, Mama. No cage._

The howls came.

Spencer slid off her back with a _thumpf_ , staggering up. She looked at him, daring him to say it.

_Run,_ was all he said, and so they did.

But he fell again.

Got up.

Fell again.

Emily trotted a few feet ahead, waiting for the slow wheeze of him staggering upright, but there was silence. Just the pups jittering around ahead, nervously torn between continuing to run or waiting for their parents. Emily stared at them. Studied Riley’s mangy black fur and her tufty tail held high; studied the vicious scars on Oliver’s muzzle and chest where the fur was thin and patchy. He’d carry them forever, memories of the day his sister died.

And then she turned slowly and stared at Spencer on the ground.

_Get up,_ she told him, and felt nothing.

A breeze ruffled his fur. His eyes blinked open.

_Get up,_ she told him again, sharper. Channelling Aaron. _I said you’d never lose me. Now get up. Your children need you. Stop **abandoning** them._

He got up. Glazed eyes and wobbling legs, there was nothing familiar in his mind when she brushed it. Just raw pain and need and a focused determination to _live_.

He walked. He said nothing. There was nothing of him that wasn’t focused on moving forward.

They walked. Every step was agony for the both of them; she could feel him internally screaming. Saliva hung in ropey strands from his gaping muzzle. His beautiful tawny mask of fur around his eyes was wet with fluid leaking from glazed eyes. He stunk of pain. Of fear. Of sickness.

He stunk of death. It welled up from his fur, almost covering the mouldering damp smell of the autumn around them.

_Keep moving,_ she told him fiercely, nipping at his flanks with cruel force. _Don’t you fucking stop now, Spencer._ And he kept moving. But they were going at a snail’s pace. It took them another two hours to reach the tree where the puppies were napping, waiting for them. The clouds thickened overhead.

The howls behind them changed. Deepened. They’d been spotted. Now, they were truly hunted.

He slumped by the crooked tree, its crooked arms reaching to the cloudy sky above, and his eyes were open and staring. She watched him fall, too stunned to do anything else; watched his paws twitch once and his white-crusted tongue loll free of a slack mouth to lay in the dirt. An ant marched across his nose, his whiskers. A fly landed on the half-healed split in his chest.

She listened to his heart slowing. _Tick tick tick… tick… tick._

_Daddy?_ whispered Oliver.

Emily was cold. Numb. Terrified. She did the last thing she could think of. All that was left to her. She howled for help. As loud as she could. Every howl she’d given before bundled up in this one wailing, sobbing call. And it was grief and it was pain and it was terror and loss and the feeling of being hunted, all tied into the one swan song. It was a _please help us_ and a _don’t let us die_ and a _where are you_ and it was a call to a pack who couldn’t hear her.

It was asking why Aaron hadn’t saved them.

And it was asking why Spencer was dying when she so, so desperately needed him to live.

She howled and she howled and she howled and the puppies howled with her. Three voices raised in a shared malediction against everything in this world that would silence them.

No one answered. 

_Em,_ Spencer said. Soft. Thin. She traced the whisper down along the fading link of their pair bond, soft and ill-used from neglect. The pups moved past her as a slow, fat rain began to fall. It threw dirt up onto their paws, landed heavy on their fur. Traced a pattern of dark soil around the dying wolf. _Hi, hello, my loves._

They crept onto him, tails tucked low and noses nuzzling at his shaggy sides. Licking his fur. Paws light and throats twitching as whines fought to slip free. And he struggled to lift his head, to swing it around and return their puppy kisses.

_Wait here,_ she told him suddenly, savagely, because she had it. Maybe if he ate, he’d be able to get another burst of energy. There was a rabbit run nearby—it wouldn’t take her long. _Wait!_ He sighed something after her, but she was already gone, sprinting through the grasses and shrubs with her nose to the ground and mind ablaze. She caught a rabbit, fat with its winter weight, and broke its neck with a quick twist of her jaws. It almost exhausted her to carry the thing back through the bowed grass to where she’d left her mate. He looked at her when she arrived, his hazel eyes dull. _Here,_ she told him, dropping the rabbit by his head. _Eat that. You’ll feel stronger._

_Give it to the pups._ The pups were staring hungrily at it. But it wasn’t for _them_.

_No. Eat it, Spencer._

Riley whined, reaching up to tap her nose against her daddy’s. The rabbit lay between them, dead and stiffening in the afternoon air. _Love you,_ Spencer said to Riley. And then he looked at her. Fading. And all she got was: _Run._

_Spence,_ she pleaded, because couldn’t he see she wasn’t strong enough for this? She wasn’t wolf enough to leave him behind. Her breath caught. She tried to snarl and sobbed instead. Something deep inside her tore, split, and she knew that she must be bleeding. She must be. It hurt so much that something must have broken. Some integral part of her. _Don’t leave me. Don’t. Just don’t._

_I’ll follow,_ he lied. His head hit the dirt. The breeze of it ruffled the rabbit’s fur. His eyes closed, tail thumping twice as the rain trickled down. _Tock tock_ on the ground, startling a beetle. _Tick tick_ continued his heart. _I just want… to look… at Oliver’s pretty fuh—for… a…_

His sides heaved once. His breath rasped. Once more.

And stopped.

_Don’t,_ she whimpered. One of the puppies whined. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was the sky above. Her face was wet, her eyes. The rain. It was raining. She backed away. Stumbled. Her paws were shaking. _Don’t. Spence, no, no. I love you. I love you. You were—are—my mate. Spence. Don’t…_

But he did.

The sun was gone. The clouds folded in.

She stood frozen until ants began to march along his limp white-socked paw. Something cackled ahead; a raven in a wind-buckled tree, watching Spencer hungrily with beady eyes. Wind ruffled his fur with the illusion of breathing. The pups stared at her, silent and shocked, their minds cold. Numb. Just as broken as she was.

And she stepped away. Away from Emily. The wolf would have left him days ago, but the human had begged her to stay. And still he’d died.

Time to not be Emily anymore.

_Get up,_ she told the pups blankly. They did. _Run_.

She didn’t touch him. She didn’t stop. She didn’t look again at the butterscotch wolf laying among the decaying leaves with rain dampening his fur to a mediocre brown. He’d never been merely brown to her. Never mediocre.

She refused to see him mediocre now.

They ran from that damp-washed place with the crooked tree and the stopped-watch heart, and forward to a sunset he’d never see.


	30. Cruelly Caught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the beginning, it was doomed to failure. She already knew. Knew as she ran from the silent body that was surely already beginning the complicated processes of decomposition she could only give lip-service to, but which he’d have been happy to regal her on for hours. She knew they’d be caught. Caught and taken to _the room_ that she remembered with perfect clarity. Her mother’s voice and Aaron’s face had faded in the time since she’d been exposed to them last, but _the room_ she remembered. Oh, how she remembered. As clearly as she remembered a wooded stream with an unmarked grave along the side, and as clearly as she’d now remember a windswept, crooked tree.

But still she tried to run, tried to save her babies from the life she knew they’d face if they were captured, because no creature was ever born who was meant to be caged.

_Mama, where’s Daddy?_ Oliver gasped as he struggled to keep up with her long-legged stride.

_Gone,_ Riley whispered, in a voice like the wind. _Gone away._

Like Aaron. Like Felicity. Like all those others.

Emily felt a little mad and very lost as she fled across the flat land of the grassy plains. Animals scattered before their mad flight, the ground-cover rearing over her pups’ heads. So small. They were so small. She had to protect them, by fleeing everything she’d lost.

But the howls followed until she wasn’t sure if they were howling anymore or if it was the inescapable wind.

They found a gully. Paused along the fast-running water that galloped downstream with caps of frothy white to gulp at the icy meltwater. It tasted like winter’s coming.

Emily left her pups there for a heartbeat and turned back only once.

The wolves were closer. Close enough that she could recognise wolf in their stride, in the formation they made as they circled about her. The one group had become two; she could see another group veering off in the direction of where she knew a lonely tree leaned over something lost.

_He’s not for you,_ she thought savagely, and turned to goad her pups onwards to greater speed. _He’ll never be hurt by you again, you fucks. Neither him nor Felicity—they’re **safe**._

And wasn’t that the best thing she could have given them?

So they ran and they ran and they ran until day became night and night became morning again and then they were caught.

Inevitable, really.

She knew it was coming. With a fox’s canny mind, she carried her pups across the fast running stream, one by one. She shook water from the sodden coat she’d worn for so long, carried since a lighthouse they’d visited a lifetime ago, and made sure the path led a wobbly trail into a broken line left by a passing deer.

Then, she carried them back.

_Run,_ she told them, as grimly as Spencer had previously told her the same. As numbly. What could a mother give her children, but freedom? _Riley, look at me, baby. You too, Oliver._

They did.

_What way is left? Which way does the watch in your chest tick?_

They tilted their heads to the left, eyes wide and ears perked. Oliver was trembling. Riley had her chest thrust out proudly, knowing that she was being good and grown up right now. Ready to fight every cat that came her way.

_And where is the sun in the morning?_

Spencer had done his children proud. Never had he taught them philosophy or the names of great authors or had he carried them into a library to see countless rows of books, but he’d named them the stars and he’d taught them the sun. They pointed two little noses towards the east, where the yellow-white blur of the sun could be seen peeking out from behind weary clouds. Emily nodded. Her muzzle was wet, her eyes blurry. The fog, she was sure, perhaps some leftover rain.

What a mother wouldn’t do for her children.

_Run,_ she told them again, and scooted Riley around to face away from her. Oliver stepped after his sister, worried, hesitant. _Run with the morning sun on the side the watch ticks, okay? And don’t stop. Run and run and if you have to, hide, but run again as soon as it’s safe._

_Mama?_ Riley whispered. _Why?_

Emily looked down at them. The wind picked up, blowing their hunters’ scent to her. Her beautiful babies: the son every bit as sharp as his father and the daughter who thought the world was hers to take, and the ghost of the girl who should have sat beside them.

_Because I’m my own wolf,_ she told them and she told Aaron and she told Spencer too, in case he was somehow listening, _and no one will cage my children while I’m alive to stop them. Now, **go**._

She put the bite in her voice, the Aaron snap, and chased it with a memory of savage wolves with tearing teeth and—horribly—the pained _why_ that was the last thought Felicity had ever had. And her children ran. Frightened pups with wolves on their heels, they fled. Alone into the wild.

She turned and ran the other way. Wet paws left a clear trail; she couldn’t hide under the grasses like they could.

There’d only be one trail for their pursuers to follow.

 

* * *

 

_Stop, wolf._

She didn’t. If they wanted her to stop, they’d have to drag her down with their own teeth and claws. Emily Prentiss stopped for no furry assholes with—

They dragged her down. But she didn’t go down quietly. She fought.

Fangs hauled at her shoulders, caught on the tough fabric of the lighthouse man’s coat. She turned on the wolves who bit at her, and she went for their throats. The more she killed, the less likely they’d go after her children. What she needed them to see was the mad wolf they’d lost, gone absolutely completely madder. Ruined by grief.

And that wouldn’t be hard. It might not even be acting.

She screamed with rage. She screamed with hate and with pain and with grief and she screamed and roared and howled with the memories of everything they’d gone through. As she screamed, she attacked. Biting at throats, at jaws, at paws. Anything that came near enough for her to lash out at. She tore at it all and she tasted hot, coppery blood and she _revelled_ in it. She wanted to kill them. She would kill them, each and every one, and she’d stand over their bodies and keep screaming until the world _listened_ to her pain.

But there were too many and she fell with a wolf on her back and another dragging her down by the collar that bound her throat. Paws became hands that pressed her to the dirt like a worm, turning her head so all she could see was a sliver of sky and a pepper-grey wolf’s face.

_Emily Prentiss, you are guilty of the crime of kidnapping,_ said the hated voice. Lionel. She remembered his name. She wished she’d killed him first. _Where are the children you took from us and tortured by your actions?_

_Dead,_ she spat. _Free of you and your fucked-up ideals. Rotting with their father, and I’m glad of it!_

He stared at her. Cold, vacant eyes that didn’t mask the empty heart behind them. He was a demagogue, leading with hollow ideals and nothing promises. _You are proud that you murdered your children?_ he said softly. She snarled. _Proud to be the reason for their deaths? If you had stayed, they would be alive. They would be healthy._ She snarled louder. _They wouldn’t have suffered._

_They were **free**! _ she screamed. Birds nearby screamed with her, startled by the agonised noise. _They died free, and so will I!_

The wolves shifted around her. She twisted in the grips of the humans holding her, fighting their hands. If she had to die, she’d die free. She’d die fighting. Lost on these flowery prairies.

Maybe he’d be waiting for her.

They shoved her back down, an easy job now she was so weakened by hunger and illness. Muzzle dug into the damp dirt, she stared balefully at the wolves to her front. They backed away from her incendiary regard. Only one slunk forward bravely, his eyes locked to hers. Ethan. He was bloodied and bitten and staring at her like she was a ghost. Other wolves moved behind him, all staring at her nervously. As though they’d only just gotten here. She could smell fear, grief. She caught the tail end of what a newcomer was whispering to Lionel.

— _his body—_

They’d found Spencer.

_You bastard,_ she whispered to Ethan alone. _He’s dead because of you._

But Ethan didn’t seem to hear her. He was looking from where she was held to behind her, and his eyes were huge, his muzzle twitching oddly. Emily kept trying to turn, to look, but she was held fast.

_Mama?_ came the call.

Emily went cold.

No.

_No_.

_No,_ she moaned. Every eye around her turned to look where Ethan was already looking. _No, no, no, Riley, no…_

_Mama?_ There was no mistaking it. A low puppy growl sounded. Faltering and scared, faced with so many wolves bigger than her, but Riley had always thought that she could fight every cat that threatened her. _Go away. Bad cats! Get away, run! I’ll bite!_

_Well,_ said Lionel, and there was a cold smile in his voice. _What a liar you are, Emily. A thief and a liar and a temptress. Eve herself has nothing on you, does she?_

_I’ll kill you,_ Emily promised him.

_Come here, little girl. Come to me. Don’t be afraid. I am your pack._

_I’ll rip you open. I’ll kill any one of you who touches her. I’ll hunt you like dogs, kill you like them, I’ll fucking **destroy** every last one of you, you fervent freaks—_

Riley leapt forward with a snarl, going for Lionel’s leg with her sharp puppy teeth. Emily roared, almost breaking free.

Almost.

_Rude_ , Lionel said. And snapped, grabbing Riley with rough teeth and a perfunctory shake of his head. She hit the ground with a yelp, and he struck her with a paw. She didn’t get up, curled tight on the floor with her mind a muddle of confusion. She’d never been struck so cruelly before. _You’ll soon stop that. Our sisters are taught to **respect**._

Emily lost it. She’d kill them or die trying.

They would not take her daughter. 

She wouldn’t remember the fight after. Not the wolves falling under her incensed jaws. Not Riley screaming. Not the coat being torn from her body, not the blood, not the pain. And there was pain.

She killed four. They didn’t die kindly. They died screaming and she gloried in that. Then she was grabbed, jaws biting down around her throat. Closing tighter. She knew how Spencer must have felt before he’d died. She knew what it felt like to suffocate. Someone else was screaming, roaring, or maybe now she was imagining

she gasped

choked

drifted

fell

.

and

opened

her eyes to Lionel leaning over her. The world was a hazy red. It stunk of blood. It hurt.

_Riley,_ she called into the foggy nothing. No one answered. Her pack was gone.

_You’ll die alone,_ Lionel told her distantly, as though he was shouting at her from inside a well or underwater. She tried to snarl. Wished he was dead. _I hope that’s what you wanted. You’re dying, bitch. Alone. And nothing is waiting for you beyond the dark._

Then he was gone. She stared at the sky. Watched the clouds turn white. Winter soon, she thought maybe. She’d used to celebrate the snow.

Riley.

They were taking Riley.

_Get up,_ she remembered telling him. _Don’t die._

_Your children need you._

She got up. She staggered after them, the retreating wolves. The crying pup they held, screaming for her mama, for her daddy, for Olly and Felik and everyone she loved.

Emily followed.

_I’ll kill you,_ she promised Lionel silently, and like a ghost she scudded up behind him and went for his throat where a pulse ticked on. He didn’t deserve it. Not like Spencer did. Spencer should have the heart that Lionel was wasting. _I’ll taste your death._

_Mama!_

They went down. Teeth tore at her. Like a bulldog, she hung on grimly. Hung on as she began to fade out. Red danced on black and still she hung on.

She would not let go.

They were moving. She was being dragged. Thrashed around like a leech on a dying host. She bit harder. Blood pumped. _Tick tick ticktickticktick_ went the heart that hammered in the unworthy chest against hers. They rolled. Leapt. Writhed.

Fell.

_This is for my family,_ she thought, and then they hit the water and she didn’t think at all anymore.

 

* * *

 

She woke, once, to wolves around her. Foggy voices saying nothing.

_Get the pup. Bring it._

_This one is done for. Shouldn’t even have bothered dragging it out the river._

_Lionel?_

_He might live. If we move fast._

_What about the other one?_

_The other one?_ she thought groggily, beginning to drift again. Water lapped at her face. _Oliver…_

_No._

_Not Oliver too…_

But the voices faded and they took the light with them. They took everything. Her family was gone. Spencer, Felicity, both dead and rotting. Oliver and Riley, taken to the compound. No one would know them to search for them. And even if Aaron, somehow, found them, he wouldn’t know them as pack. They were lost.

Everything was lost.

She lay in the river and waited to die, dreaming of a tan wolf waiting.


	31. Deceptively Dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Mama!”_

_“Hi, baby.” Emily laughed, reaching down with hale hands to sweep the girl with the rag-doll mop of hair into her arms. Felicity smiled, wide and crooked with two missing teeth and her daddy’s eyes crinkled at the corners with irrepressible glee. “How are you?”_

_“Bored,” she complained. “Daddy won’t let me play in the sand.”_

_“It’s not safe,” said a quiet voice, and Emily tightened her grip, pain and shock rushing her. That voice. That **voice**. “Do you know how many pathogens lurk in sand?”_

_Emily turned._

_“Oh Spencer,” she whispered, and stepped forward into his waiting—_

Cold. Cold and emptiness. She flickered awake and wished she were dead. Pain lurched. Her eyes were open to a darkly white world, twisting and twining around her with grasping tendrils. Emily stared at the white sky above, and then rolled from the icy water that lapped at her haunches. She left behind smears and pools of fur-lined red. Blood stuck her tackily to the dirt below. Her body screamed and tore with every movement and the world wavered and dipped.

And she was alone.

_Spencer,_ she called, and wished he was there. _Please. Please don’t leave me to **—die.**_

_Emily was cringing on the ground, legs bowed submissively and ass against the floor. Tail tucked, ears back, throat bared. And Lionel stood in front with her children by his side._

**_Revoke your past ties,_ ** _Lionel sneered, white fangs glittering and eyes burning. **Revoke this bitch. She’s nothing to you. She’ll die alone.**_

**_Nothing to us,_ ** _the pups echoed, their own teeth bared. **We revoke her.**_

**_No!_ ** _screamed Emily and tried to attack. But the throat she grasped wasn’t Lionel’s. Blood gushed and she let go with a cry, Spencer slipping limply to the ground. Red pooling around him as his hollow eyes stared accusingly at his murderer._

**_I didn’t kill you,_ ** _she told him frantically, paws scrambling at his torn throat. **Spence. No, no, I didn’t kill you. I tried to help you. Stop dying!** Her pups watched. Watching him die. _

_Again._

_She whirled, facing their blank expressions. **I didn’t kill him. I didn’t** —I didn’t. Please believe me…_

_I know._

She blinked awake to fire and ice. Ice nipped at the broken edges of her body, her paws numb, her ears and mouth frozen. But her throat, her shoulders, all the places the wolves had struck and bitten, they pulsed with a boiling, throbbing heat that left her shaking. It was a sick heat.  And she wasn’t by the river anymore, but laid out on the grass. Fighting the heat that oozed and bubbled, she twisted her head upright and stared at the drag marks. She’d been dragged. Her coat, Spencer’s coat, covered her body.

_You didn’t kill me,_ said a voice, puzzled and thin, and she turned her head again and gasped to find Spencer standing over her, his eyes dull. _I’m not dead?_

_Oh thank god,_ she sobbed, trying to touch him, nuzzle him, anything to prove he was okay. _You have to stop them. They have our children, Spencer, please._

He flinched. She felt him.

And then a soft muzzle brushed hers. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. Alive. But his scent was wrong. Harsh. Stale. Ice where it should have been fire.

_Just rest, Emily. You’re hurt. You’re sick. You need to rest._

That wasn’t right. That wasn’t Spencer. Spencer would never rest when their pups needed him. She had to—

_Spencer paced over her. **You let Lionel take them!** he screamed. **How could you do that! To our children?**_

_She blinked and it wasn’t Spencer anymore_ but Ethan. He sat outlined by the fog and the sun with his shoulders hunched.

_You betrayed us,_ she slurred, her mind fracturing as the heat reached it.

He glanced at her. _I didn’t,_ he said tiredly. _I never did. I fought for you. And still my brother is dead._

She closed her eyes against the truth in that statement. Fought it for a moment and caved, sinking back into the dark.

At least in there, she wasn’t responsible.

At least in there, he was waiting. She _opened her eyes and looked at him. Then she looked around._

_“We’re in the room,” she said with a shudder, sinking back into the bed. In the room, maybe, but…_

_Not alone._

_“Of course,” he said from where he stood by the window, looking out. All long lines and angled planes, and she stared hungrily at his healthy human body. “We’ve been here all along, Emily. Where did you think we were?”_

_“A nightmare.” She held her hand out to him. “Nothing but a nightmare.”_

_And he turned, stepping towards her and taking it, letting himself be drawn into the bed alongside her. Blankets wrapped around them. She nestled in the curve of his warm body with him folded around her, and she felt safe._

_“I love you,” she said, and wished she’d told him sooner. “You’re a part of me now. A part I can’t lose.”_

_And Spencer said nothing._

When she opened her eyes, there was a mouse twitching by her nose and Spencer’s scent on the air to her dazed mind. She snuffed, coughing, and the mouse skittered away.

The fog shifted and billowed and a shape bounded towards her. Long and lean and tan; her heart skipped once and then slammed hard as she saw butterscotch fur and one white paw. But the sky was thick and had fallen on them while she’d been sleeping. His form never cemented to her hazy eyes. It paused on the cusp of her field of vision, arching and pacing until she wasn’t sure if she was watching a wolf or the illusion of one.

She tried to stand and found herself legless. Floating. But it didn’t hurt anymore.

Didn’t hurt until it did.

Suddenly, she was upright on a bed of folded grass. Paws trembling, body shivering. Head hanging low, she looked at what she could see of her body and found it matted and rank with oozing discharge from around the swollen bites. Others looked healthy, scabbed over, but a thick, cloying scent lingered and stung at her nostrils.

_Infection,_ she thought dreamily, and swayed as she took an unsteady step forward, the ground looping and swirling below her paws.

_Move out of my way,_ said a voice. Emily tried to focus on it and couldn’t. _I’m helping, tiny idiot._

And the air rumbled and thrummed. Emily opened her mouth and rumbled with it, unsure why but absolutely sure she was supposed to.

And then she tipped. Off the bed of folded grass. Down onto that whirling ground, muzzle-first. Tasted dirt and blood and copper. Lay crumpled until she wasn’t lying anymore but staring up at a white-hued sky. Something brushed her chest. Popped and crackled nearby.

She smelled smoke and heat and burning.

_What is that?_ whispered a ghost. _What is that, Mama?_

She blinked again. Looked up. Stared at the man kneeling by a small, black-billowing fire throwing waves of undeniable heat into the clearing. And the shaky world sharpened, just a little.

A nudge against her shoulder leaving a sticky smear that tugged and pulled painfully at individual strands of fur. She turned her head, agonisingly slowly, to stare at the nudger.

Butterscotch fur. Hazel eyes.

_Hot,_ Oliver whined, the fire reflecting in his dark pupils. _Ow._

Emily swallowed. Looked to the man. To her shoulder, where firelight glittered amber in the depths of the pine sap smeared across all her injuries.

_Come here,_ she whispered to her pup, letting him inch closer before picking him up by his rough scuff and standing again, shaking the coat to the ground. Less wobbly this time, because she had a purpose. She walked, slowly and painfully, off the grassy bed and away from that firelit glow.

“Where are you going?” his husky voice called, and she walked quicker because she refused to go mad. Spencer was dead. He was dead, and that wasn’t him. And if that wasn’t him, he was _dangerous._ “Emily. Stop. I’m not here to hurt you.”

But her goal was close. This world was wet, damp and rotted from the inside out, just like the broken tree ahead. She limped towards it, sniffing at the wet wood and the oozing crack between the roots that sunk deep into the ground. A scraped-out burrow, deep and unpleasantly moist. She put Oliver down first, scooting him into it. It would protect him. She would protect him. He vanished into the black. Alive. Untaken. Despite the sick heat trying to unseat this moment of clarity, she took a moment to savour that.

She hadn’t failed all her family. Not yet.

So, she followed her son, squeezing and squashing down deep. Bark walls and muddy sides ripped at still-healing wounds. Water trickled between the pads of her paws. It stunk of mildew and moss and earth, but all that was still kinder than the hot, thick scent of her body burning.

And she curled down close in that dank hole that felt like the end of the world, gloomy and moist and humid with their shared breathing, wrapping her body around Oliver’s and sighing as she settled down into a restless, painful kind of sleep. It wasn’t enough to shut out the voice of the man who looked and sounded like Spencer to her fevered brain.

“You can’t stay down there forever… you’ll both starve. You need medical attention. Let me _help_ you.”

But he was wrong. She could stay down here. Down here was _safe_.

_Mama, what wrong?_ Oliver asked, blinking in the dark. _Bad smell._

If she tried to reply, she failed, her mind a garbled mess of voices. And she slept, dropping from a hole in the ground and down into the recesses of her disordered mind, where there was no one waiting for her and no hope to be found.

Outside the den, a wolf began to howl, fading off into a coyote call of wailing yips.

 

* * *

 

She roused in a grave of her own devising. She was alone.

Breathing deep in the stink of rot, she turned her head towards a hazy line of light leaking through from the world above. The world where he wasn’t anymore. She grieved because she was alone in the earth and she knew she’d been mad after all. There was no one out there waiting. No Oliver to be kept safe. No Spencer to hold her close. No Aaron to take them home.

It slipped from her jaws without her consciously deciding to make a sound. A low, keening moan of loss and destruction; a rusty, ugly sound that was somehow so feebly inadequate to describe what she’d had and had no longer. Not only missing from her world but also taken from her body, she could feel their loss viscerally in her chest and her heart; a hollow, aching emptiness that she knew would fill slowly with bitterness and regret until she was the physical incarnation of the hole she currently cringed in.

Her family was gone, and she’d failed them utterly.

And so, she grieved.

Something touched her mind. A soft whisper. There was no illusion of familiarity with this brush of consciousness; she didn’t know this wolf and he approached nervously.

She didn’t know him, but she knew his name. For a moment, as if her fever-induced hallucinations had sparked a kernel of hope, she thought of Spencer alive; in the next instant, she understood irrevocably that he wasn’t. And it was as though he’d died all over again, under a different crooked tree.

A growl slunk out between her clenched teeth. She arched her back, feeling the root-lined roof scrape painfully against the prominent bumps of her spine. The hole made her snarl louder, more resonant, until it sounded as though the ground itself was rumbling its fury at the interloper who dared intrude upon her mourning.

_I grieve him too,_ Ethan said quietly. _You’re all I have left of him. Please, let me help you. Don’t die. I can’t lose you as well…_

Her growl stopped. She hadn’t wanted to stop it; it had just ceased on its own. And she curled down into herself; a scabby, dirty, wreck of a wolf who’d once been proud, numbly considering his proposal.

Live, for him and all the wolves she’d loved who hadn’t.

Or die and join them.

_You don’t know me,_ she replied, and closed her eyes. It barely made a difference in the dark.

_I know. I don’t. I’m sorry for that._

_He’s dead because of you._

Silence, broken by a feeling that was pain and nothing cleaner.

_I know. They wouldn’t let me see his body. I fought them. I tried to… I tried to stop them from reaching you. But I’m only one wolf. What can one wolf change?_

And Emily laughed and laughed and laughed at Ethan, who was half of his brother and hardly even a wolf at all anymore. Spencer was only one wolf, and he’d carried them across Efisga on his own back without faltering.

What could one wolf change?

_Everything,_ she cried, between helpless, manic laughter. _One wolf can change everything._

And she got up, leaving the lonely dark behind and walking out once more into the light.

 

* * *

 

When she limped out, blinking, into a dim autumnal light, Oliver was there. She stared down at his fluffy tail curled between his hind legs, black dorsal stripe bristling as he snarled at the wolf facing them. Ethan stood away from the protective pup, his own tail low. As soon as Oliver realized she was out, he backed up, stopping when his rear end bumped her legs. But the growling continued, and she almost collapsed down onto him with the relief of knowing it hadn’t all been false.

She wasn’t alone. He was _safe_.

_He’s a spitfire,_ Ethan commented quietly, nodding to the fiercely growling little pup. Said spitfire was now trying to hide between her paws, still snarling. _Won’t let me near you._ No one had ever described _Oliver_ as a spitfire before. Emily thought this and then winced when she realized no one had ever _known_ Oliver to describe him. And that hurt; a reminder of their isolation.

_If you go near him, I’ll kill you,_ was all she had the energy to reply. The cold of her burrow felt like it had sunk deep into her bones, chilling her to her core. It only made the heat of the bites worse, as the rest of her body turned numb. Not even her cramping gut or throbbing head or burning thirst was as aggressive as the need to feel a warmth that wasn’t trying to destroy her.

Ethan was silent as she hobbled like a geriatric past him, Oliver doing some strange kind of shuffling hop to stay between her paws, intent on the smouldering fire she knew was just past the grassy heap. And it was, coals glowing orange-black, barely alive.

She slumped by it anyway, sides heaving with the exhaustion of the movement. Gone were the days of fearlessly racing after the wolves of her pack or jogging with Aaron. Just the few feet between here and the den had shattered her.

_I’m not coming near you,_ Ethan said to her, inching around them. Not near was still too close, and both Emily and Oliver prickled angrily at him. Oliver danced out and back, torn between hiding against her belly fur where he’d be safe and racing out to snap at the air around his uncle’s paws. _I’m going to relight the fire, okay? And then hunt. You’re probably all thirsty too._

They ignored him. Because of him, Spencer was dead and Riley was taken.

_Okay,_ Ethan said softly, and shifted. Emily looked away quickly, refusing to see him as human and real. But then she looked back.

She’d been trained to look beyond her own biases, a long time ago. Maybe a part of her still believed in that. He hunched by the fire, naked and shivering. Broader than Spencer, paler. Muscled where Spencer was slim but without a shred of spare fat. He was lean to Spencer’s slender, dark where his brother was fair, and Emily hated that she couldn’t look at him without comparing the two.

And she hated, _hated_ , that she could see Riley in the shape of his eyes, as they flickered up and snapped away before catching her gaze.

Despite the cold, his hands were agile. The clearing was silent but for the thin growls of her over-protective son and the click of the small fire-starter the man had on a silver chain around his throat. The fire popped and grew under his easy coaxing. Bowed forward as he was, the chain swayed out from his chest. She studied what hung on it. The clip that held his fire-starter, a round disk she assumed was a small compass. A thin braid woven in the links of the chain, mousey brown. FBI dog tags.

She swallowed hard as he straightened and those tags thumped back hollowly against dirty white skin. Grey-rimmed in rubber; she didn’t have to inch closer to know exactly what they read. But she did anyway, heaving herself upright and limping those fateful few steps. He kneeled, frozen awaiting her judgement, with his knees sinking in the soft loam.

**SWReid509445:094**

She looked at that and then she looked at him. The purple bruising under his eyes. The downward turn to a wide mouth. The emptiness to the dark-hazel eyes that she’d only ever seen in victims before, in those who’d been beaten down so relentlessly by their circumstances that they’d stopped believing in happy endings.

She wondered if her eyes looked like that.

She wondered if Spencer’s had.

He tried to look away and winced, hand flickering up to brush against a shoulder that was mottled purple and yellow. She hadn’t noticed him limping, but now that she was closer she could see the slanted way he was sitting. Dislocated. His throat near it was marred by shallow bites, his right hip and side similarly marked. Not to kill. They were to warn. A primitive signalling that _you’re not welcome here anymore._ Wolves were marked like that to show others that their pack had exiled them, that they’d been so disloyal they’d been cast away.

Before Spencer had been her friend and far before he’d ever been her uncertain lover, he’d been this man’s brother.

The fire was warm and she was tired. Too tired to puzzle anew over this.

But as she slunk back to where her son waited, she didn’t hate that man anymore. She didn’t think she would again. Not when he wore his pain like a second skin, watching her silently with his brother’s death tracing every line of his body.

Rather, she felt nothing for him. Which was good.

It meant that she wouldn’t feel remorseful when she used his guilt to force him into saving her daughter.

 

* * *

 

_Your pup keeps wandering,_ Ethan told her when she groggily woke. _He runs if I try to herd him back._

That woke her up. _Where is he?_ she gasped, struggling to stand and failing. Far from being cold, her body had decided that today, she was on fire. But her mind felt clearer, sharper, probably thanks to the rabbit Ethan had nudged warily towards her and Oliver the night before.

It was a week after they’d taken Riley, and she was dimly aware that it was a week too late to be coming back to her mind. They had to _go_. Winter was looming, and she would not lose another year to the polar night.

_There._ Emily followed where Ethan gestured, squinting at the cloudy distance. _That bank of trees. There’s a rabbit warren there. He’s determined to help feed you. He’s getting better at the catching part, but did you never tell him he has to actually **kill** the things? He keeps dragging them back kicking and squeaking and then looking confused when they run off as soon as he lets go._

_He’s two,_ Emily retorted. _Most two-year-olds aren’t even up to the catching rabbits stage._

_Maybe where you’re from,_ Ethan replied quietly. _We grow up faster here. Are you thirsty? I’ll take you down to the river and then try to herd him back… again._

Emily dearly wanted to say _no_ or even better _fuck off_ , but she _was_ thirsty. Miserably so.

_Yes,_ she replied with blunt aggression, and didn’t hide her discomfort as he shifted into human form and scooped her up, carrying her easily despite his recently relocated shoulder. To his credit, he barely winced despite her knowing it must have been hurting him. He set her by the river she’d nearly died in and shifted again, silently walking away to go and find her son. And she lay on useless legs that wouldn’t carry her, lapping at the icy water and being thankful that the water was running quickly enough that it didn’t catch her reflection. Anger at her weakness slammed into her. She forced herself up. Ignored the warning black at the edges of her vision.

And she walked. Step by painful step.

Back to the campsite.

Step. By. Step.

By the time she reached it, she was gone. Drifting in her own mind, her body moving on autopilot. Burning. Her vision was black and red. But she fucking made it.

And then she fell.

And then she slept. And dreamed.

Of mist and smoke curling around her like a cat, bumping its muzzle against her paws and her rump and whispering _this way._ Dreamed of following the yellow-white wisps to a smoky horizon, where a black wolf watched her from the depths of the fog.

_Where are you?_ the black wolf asked sadly. _Come home._

_Where is home?_ she asked him. _Where are you?_

And he stood alone on a rocky ridge, looking down into nothing. A howl drifted nearby. Coyote calling. She wanted to return that call, but couldn’t find her wayward voice.

She woke up instead.

_What’s next?_ she asked Ethan as she slipped back to consciousness and shook away the weary dream, finding him staring into the depths of the flickering flames with an emptiness that chilled her. _One of us has to go after Riley._

He twitched, turning to look at her with his large ears folding back. _What?_ he asked. _No, we can’t. She’s gone, Emily. They’ll have taken the train at Junction back to Barrow. It’s the last train of the year—nothing can travel up there during the polar night. And you’ll die before you make it even back to Junction._

Her anger was slow and tepid. Drained by exhaustion and the heat that had become creeping and spiky. The skin around the bites was mottled and lined with red that crept under her fur.

_We’re not abandoning her,_ she replied with a low growl. _Either you go after her, or I will._

_You’ll die,_ he snapped. _And if I show up there, they’ll kill me and they’ll kill Quinn. I won’t risk my mate for you. Grieve her. Your pup is gone. Such is life. We bear them and we lose them—that’s part of being a wolf._

_She’s not dead!_ Emily roared, standing with a surge of ferocious energy. _Stop talking about her like she is!_

_She’s as good as dead. The same as the pups I lost. They’re gone, all of them._

And the anger vanished. She swallowed. The Emily of a year ago would have thrown herself at him, teeth and claws and righteous fury.

The Emily of today knew how loss burned and carved and left less than what was there before.

_Your pups are alive,_ she said softly. Ethan looked away, his mind twisting inward and turning small. Just like Spencer had when he’d hated what they’d done to her. _They’re alive, Ethan. Whatever those bastards have tried to twist you into believing, it’s not true. Your children are alive and you can take them back, take **Quinn** back. And Riley. We’re not beaten. _

Ethan hunched. A sad wolf on the cusp of giving up. _What’s next?_ she’d asked him, and she suspected he had absolutely no clue. He was clinging to her because she was undeniably the only thing he had left to clutch onto. A stranger to him, but the one remaining link to a brother he’d adored.

_You stink of infection and rot,_ Ethan murmured. _We’re not welcome at Junction, and the closest settlement is Hearth, which doesn’t welcome predatory shifts. We’re not even supposed to be down here—the prairies are a closed ecosystem for prey shifts. Spencer is dead. I’ve been exiled because I stopped them killing you. We’re not welcome back into the States, your collar will mark you an outsider on the border settlements if we take you there for care. I don’t understand what part of—where’s Oliver?_

Emily twitched, looking around. Reaching out with her mind for the pup right as Ethan surged upright. He’d been here moments ago.

Hadn’t he?

_Oliver!_ she called, struggling to walk without her legs tipping. _Oli—_

_Mama!_ Her pup bounced out from the thicket, shoving and dragging something along with him… _Looksee what I got. Food! Yum!_

_What is… that?_ Ethan murmured as the pup deposited his prize, tail wagging madly and his entire rear end wagging along. Muzzle sticky with the juice of the mangled…

_A… watermelon?_ Emily answered, nonplussed. _Do they grow wild?_

_Not in Efisga,_ Ethan answered, putting his paw down to stop the bitten watermelon from doing a wobbly roll into the campfire. _Oliver, where did you find this?_

_Playin’,_ Oliver answered pertly. _Playin’ huntin’. Food for Mama and Rilly._

Emily winced.

_Rilly huntin’ with Daddy,_ Oliver continued happily, trying to steal back his prize with his oversized puppy paws and falling over. Emily watched him as he grabbed it with his jaws, muzzle buried in the pink innards of the fruit where the shell had smashed. _And I got the food. So, no more huntin’._

Oh. Oh.

He was trying to bring them _home_.

Emily whined, the noise sharp and narrow and cutting into the quiet morning. Hazel eyes cut up to stare curiously at her above the fruit, Oliver’s ears perking up.

Ethan spoke suddenly, his voice odd. _I’m taking you both to Hearth,_ he said. _They don’t like us there, but they won’t deny you medical care. And then I’ll take you home._

_Why?_ she asked him. _What changed between now and when I asked you last?_

Ethan stared at Oliver, his eyes soft.

_He’s not completely gone,_ he answered finally. _There’s still some of him left to save._

* * *

They began to move slowly towards the place called Hearth. At least, Ethan reassured her they were.

Everything was a little lost over this time. Her world narrowed to putting one paw in front of the other. Eating. Vomiting. Falling. Being nudged back to her feet. Watching a giddy sun whirl around a cloudy sky.

_Maybe we should stop?_ Spencer told her one day, hovering in front of her with his gentle eyes worried.

_No, love,_ she told him, and touched his muzzle with hers. For some reason, he recoiled. _We’ll keep going. We’ll make it home._

_Ah,_ he replied nervously, and paced and paced and paced until she was dizzy with his indecision.

_It’s snowing,_ Oliver announced suddenly. Emily looked up into dancing white.

_Go show your sister,_ she said sleepily. _Felicity loves the snow._

_Mama?_ Oliver said, staring at her. _No Felik?_

_Mama?_

_Is Mama hungry?_

_Is she sleeping?_

_Why?_

Why…

She woke and arms carried her. Not a wolf, but strong arms and a beating heart.

_Sef,_ she whispered, because he’d carried her home once before. _Don’t tell Mom I fucked up._

“Oliver, keep up,” said Sef. Who was Oliver? Where were they?

She shivered and shook snow from her nose as it flurried about them.

And then she woke properly in the darkest night. A fire flickered by her side. A dark honey-brown wolf lay sleeping along the fireside, his fire glittering in the flames. Sides moving slowly. Oliver gnawed playfully on the coat wrapped around her and him both. It crunched under his teeth.

_Don’t do that,_ she said tiredly, right as he tugged at the coat and it tore, spooling loose. _Oliver!_

It was a feeling of sluggish horror, as though his puppy teeth had just shredded one last link between her and Spencer. The coat they’d worn since the lighthouse had bound them. She remembered the polar bear, his excitement, his tears as he’d grieved his brother, his awe at the whales below. And she snatched the coat away from their son, gasping as it continued falling apart with a sound like paper tearing.

Oliver whined in confusion, dropping what he held. It took a moment for Emily’s sick brain to realize what it was. Not material at all. He hadn’t torn the coat—he’d torn the lining, and tugged free something that had been tucked inside the waterproof coat since careful fingers had tucked it secretly within.

In the light of the fire Emily stared at a tattered charcoal drawing laying at her son’s paws, curled at the edges and grubby where dirty fingers had touched it. She stared at the man sitting with a black wolf in his lap.

She stared at a face she’d been trying to forget and the love that was etched so openly there.

A breeze blew, gusting light whispers of snow against their sides. And it picked up the picture, laughed at her weakness, and flung it into the fire.

It burned. Gone before she could cry out. Eaten by the greedy flames.

Gone.

_Oops,_ said Oliver guiltily, cringing away from her horror and sorrow. He ran, tail tucked and ears low, to huddle by his uncle’s side. _Sorry Mama. I’m sorry. No mad. Don’t be mad, I’m sorry!_

She looked at him. Snow eddied around them. She was tired, shivering, overwarm, confused. Spencer was gone. The picture was gone. Riley was…

Somewhere.

She stood and began to walk.

_Stay with Ethan,_ she told Oliver, when he tried to follow. _Stay. I love you. Stay._

_Okay? Mama? Are you going to get Daddy? Get Rilly?_

She walked and she walked until she felt the tenuous link that was _pack_ begin to pull and stretch. The link that was once her and Aaron and everyone at home and had then become her and Spencer and had then added three more little lives.

The link that was now just her and Oliver.

She walked until the link tore wider and she walked until she couldn’t even feel her son anymore.

And then she stopped. Breathed once in the snowy dawn.

Reached for him.

Breathed again.

And _panicked_.

_Oliver!_ she screamed, and turned to go back the way she’d come. Her pawprints fading in the soft snow as wind covered them. Lost. White yawned around her, yawned above. Alone in this world. Blue light touched the white. _Oliver!_ She screamed his name, in her mind and out loud.

Howled for him.

Howled for him and for Spencer and for Riley and for anyone listening as she lost her mind in a panic of _I can’t be alone I am alone no please help me_ and howled and howled and howled, a lone wolf singing for salvation. A crow landed nearby, rattling its wings and staring at her oddly.

She stumbled and fell, legs giving in. Shuddered her way to the ground, her mind fracturing. Legs stiffening. Her howl choked.

Paws moved silently towards her across the frozen white. A black wolf loomed out of the darkness. A black wolf made of kindness and softness and he brought more snow that covered her in a gentle blanket of _rest now_. He howled for her, softly, and his voice trailed into coyote yips.

And she recognised that wolf because he’d come for her before. He’d ridden in the train with her into Efisga. He’d stood in the corners of the room with her. He’d danced on the snow with her.

He’d taken her daughter for her, led her kindly out from vicious jaws and into a tender repose.

And he’d come eventually to lead Spencer gently away into the night.

_Not yet,_ she told Death, but he’d been waiting for her for years now and she’d finally fallen to him. _Not until my children are safe._

But he kept walking towards her, until he reformed into a honeyed wolf with hollow eyes and a silver chain. _What were you trying to do?_ Ethan asked angrily, digging her out of the snow. _You could have died!_

_I did,_ she replied, or maybe thought of replying.

_Where’s Oliver?_ the other wolf was saying, angry still, helping her upright. Emily shrugged listlessly and then realized what he’d said.

_With you,_ she said slowly, turning and blinking at a shadow that could be a black wolf watching. Her vision doubled, narrowed, darkened. She needed to sleep. Wait. Oliver? _I left him with you. You’ll care for him like I can’t. A child for the ones you lost. Something to… I left him with you?_

Ethan stared at her.

_He’s not with me,_ he said slowly, and then they heard the howl.

_Mama!_ screamed Oliver, a black wolf walking slowly towards him in a wooded clearing. _Mama!_ he screamed again, terrified, and the black wraith loomed. Noiseless paws on silent snow, it crept low and reached for him.

_No!_ screamed Emily, because Death was supposed to come for _her_ , not him!

They ran for him. Two broken wolves racing towards Death on a snowy plain, hoping to outrun him.

Knowing they couldn’t.


	32. Reaper Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron**

Sanctuary was a city made of building blocks stacked haphazardly together by many hands. Stepping from one block to another was walking into a different world, entirely separate from the last. Wide swathes of greenways cut the city into divisions, the streets narrow and cobbled and suited for foot traffic only. People walked on four legs just as often as two, and it wasn’t unusual to turn a corner and find a gaggle of naked children slipping from human form to animal as they tussled and played in loud gangs, shedding warm clothes and knitted hats behind them like leaves from a tree. It made Aaron shiver just to watch them. As the weather shifted from brisk to cold, parents and onlookers chased the children with lined cloaks designed to hang over human or animal shoulders, attaching them around their grumbling charges’ necks.

It was a strange mix of times. The city was ill-lit with few modern conveniences, but every block had a small building with a bright green cross emblazoned across the door where anyone could go for a hot meal and spare clothing and more than once they saw children herded away from trouble by random passers-by, casually upholding pack life.

Only the wolves who’d followed Aaron across the border wore tags around their throats. After a week in the city, waiting to find out if they would be allowed to leave the district or if they were being held here, many of the wolves who’d crossed the border stopped wearing their tags too.

Anxious to begin his search, Aaron wasn’t able to enjoy the full access to the city they’d been given. He kept to their quarters, a sprawling maisonette designed in the old pack style—multi-family wings for packs to have familial privacy while still living in each other’s proximity—pacing the halls and lurking in the library looking up maps of the area for routes to each of the thirty-seven registered settlements.

Elizabeth found him here midway through the second week. Unlike Aaron, she was unsurprised by their confinement. Without an organized law enforcement, Efisga policy was to attain a majority vote on decisions with an assembled gathering of no less than fourteen pack leaders. Apparently, they’d had warning of Aaron’s crossing and voted that they be retained until their ‘true’ motives were ascertained.

“They don’t believe that we’re searching for one of ours,” Aaron said angrily, seeing her walking into the library and standing with his hand on the book of maps he’d been trying to memorise. “Why would they believe us over their own?”

“We’re not in the States anymore, Aaron,” Elizabeth replied, seating herself. “Packs here uphold their own laws within their communities, with some exceptions. So long as their activities don’t hurt another pack, there’s very little judicial crossover. Something like this, with an outside pack, is unprecedented. It took time for them to come to a majority agreement.”

“And what decision have they come to?” Dave asked, appearing from between two stacks and leaning against the shelf. “Do they believe us, or are we going to be packed up and shipped back to the States?”

“They’ve decided to abide by the same procedure as they would any other newcomer to the country,” Elizabeth said quietly, her eyes never leaving Aaron’s. “A pack here has to speak for us in order to be allowed free reign outside of Sanctuary city. Apparently, someone has.”

“Who?” Dave asked.

Elizabeth didn’t look happy. Aaron stiffened, because that look was dangerously close to Emily’s when she was delivering unwelcome news. “Lionel of the Barrow pack, North Slope,” she replied finally. Aaron frowned, not recognising the name or the locale. “Aaron, it’s Quinn’s pack. The ones who took Emily and Spencer. They’re sending representatives to vouch for us as a symbol of good faith—and taking us to the compound to prove that our accusations are groundless. The bastards knew we were coming. They’re supposed to be meeting us here.”

Aaron didn’t react. He couldn’t. He stared down at the map and grimly thought that over.

How could they _deny_ these claims? They had Quinn. They had video footage of Emily’s confinement. JJ and Garcia were keeping in contact with him while he still had internet access within the city, emailing him reports and relays of information being unearthed from the data Quinn had smuggled across the border. There were medical files on both Spencer and Emily—files on the drugs they’d used to force Spencer and Emily together, pages of viciously clinical psychological reports detailing exactly how that forced union had affected them, Emily’s fear and spiralling disassociation, Spencer’s withdrawal from her. Aaron hadn’t read those files. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, instead skimming the carefully moderated notes JJ had given Garcia to email to him.

He had, however, read the files on Emily’s pregnancy. The three pups she’d carried. Paper crunched under his hands as they clenched. The three pups that had died with her in a frozen river, four thousand miles from home.

“So, we’re to travel with the man who took her from us?” he asked quietly. Elizabeth nodded. “Very well.” And without another word, he walked out of the library and back to the room he shared with Dave and Morgan.

It was time to read those files.

 

* * *

 

Morgan and Dave joined him an hour later, sitting silently down at the table and each taking a pad of paper and one of the tablets the Efisgans had given them to keep in contact with people at home. They were being treated remarkably well. Aaron had already commented on the fact that there seemed to be very little resentment aimed towards them about the border tensions, despite him being a core component of them.

“Efisgans believe in the pack before all,” Elizabeth had replied. “You say you’re doing this for your pack—that gives you a lot more power here than you know.”

The room was silent but for the scratch of pens on paper. Occasionally, one of them would slip away to the nearby office and return with another large stack of paper to add to the four piles resting in the centre of the table. Four piles, two wolves.

Two for Emily. Two for Spencer. Medical and psychological.

Despite his unfamiliarity with the jargon, Aaron had started with Spencer’s medical. It was the smallest, but also the least confronting. Nothing leapt out to assail him with guilt or horror beyond the pages detailing the exact concoction they’d used to render him senseless during his season.

Morgan had Spencer’s psychological reports and his face was emotionless.

Dave had Emily’s.

Hours ticked on until the night brought with it an icy chill in the unheated rooms. Dave stood, walking to the window and fiddling with the latch before turning and striding towards the kitchenette for coffee.

“Please, if you’re brewing,” Morgan said without looking up from the papers he was enthralled in. In response, Dave slammed his palm into the doorframe with a _crack_ that made them both jump, before slamming the door behind him. Aaron and Morgan stared at the silent door.

“Did I say something wrong?” Morgan asked, putting the paperwork down gently and looking to Aaron. Aaron didn’t answer, simply stood and pulled the notebook Dave had been working on across the table, skimming the tightly scrawled notes with his heart in his throat and his hands steady. And then he put the notebook down and, just as silently, followed his friend into the next room, closing the door behind him.

Dave stood by the sink, staring down into the dishes set there to dry. Face turned away from Aaron; Aaron refused to play along and pretend he didn’t know that the other man was crying.

“It makes it real, doesn’t it?” Aaron said, despite it feeling a little bit like a lie. It had always been real for him. “Seeing exactly what was done to them…” He stepped up next to the other man and Dave turned to face him, eyes red and teeth gritted. A wild flicker of _wolf_ in his eyes. Aaron didn’t feel that yet. The desire for _revenge_ he could see painted across his friend’s face. It would come—likely when he was faced with this _Lionel_ and a secluded room—but he was holding it back right now. Or biding his time. Or maybe he’d been feeling it for so long that it felt normal to be angry now.

“’Injuries self-inflicted indicate the existence of suicidal ideation,’” Dave recited from memory, his expression turning icy. “‘If the female’s conduct continues to cause concern about possible negative impacts upon community members, these tendencies can be harnessed in order to create a solution that will increase dependence behaviours in the male pair.’ Pretty words to say that if Emily didn’t _submit_ they were going to torture her into _suicide_ , Aaron. To get to Reid. To make him _grieve_ so they could _fuck_ with his fucking head!”

He was shouting now, shaking, and Aaron felt sick.

“If Lionel comes here, I’ll kill him,” Dave promised, baring human teeth in a wolfish promise. “I’ll gut him like the fish he is. Don’t stop me, Aaron, I won’t be stopped.”

Aaron went to open his mouth—possibly to talk Dave down, possibly to agree with him—but whatever he was going to say was stalled by the door bursting open and Morgan sliding in, eyes huge. Elizabeth was behind him, hair loose and dressed for bed with her mouth hanging open in an uncharacteristically wolf-y sign of shock.

“They’ve made contact,” she exclaimed, steadying herself against the door. The two men stared at her.

“The compound wolves?” Dave said coolly, lowering his gaze to hide the twitch of his mouth.

“No,” gasped Elizabeth, her eyes closing and staying closed as she shivered over into herself.

And Aaron took a breath. One last breath in a world that he could tell was about to change again.

“Spencer,” she said, and Aaron took another breath. This one in a world that still held Emily in it. “They’re alive. They’re at Junction—this whole place is in disarray, they’d thought, they… They’re alive, Aaron, _oh_.”

 

* * *

 

If Spencer and Emily were at Junction, so were Lionel and the compound wolves. Aaron _refused_ to lose them again. Despite their determination to move fast, it still took them almost two more weeks to gain permission to move to Junction, as well as the leeway to keep in contact with those from home, and every minute tore at Aaron’s heart. Spencer didn’t contact them again, and the lines to Junction were silent. Unease in Sanctuary grew.

But then permission was gained. Supplies were given. And, unsaid but implicit in the anger growing in the wolves of the Efisgan border, they were _believed_.

_“It’s not right,”_ Aaron heard whispered around the city. _“Taking wolves like that… from their packs. It’s not right at all.”_

_“Hope he gets his own back. I’d kill anyone who took my mate.”_

_“If he doesn’t, the pack leaders will… no one will allow this kind of thing… right?”_

_“But what if they’re lying?”_

_“But what if they’re not?”_

“I told you. They believe in pack, and this goes against everything pack is,” Elizabeth explained as they rushed to prepare to leave as soon as the sun rose. “As far as the Efisgans are concerned, if Emily and Spencer are alive and here to vouch that they _were_ kidnapped, then it becomes a matter for the pack in which the wounded parties belong. They won’t assist with the legalities since the wounded parties aren’t Efisgans, but there are discussions underway over whether the definition of ‘sanctuary’ should still cover those who use that protection to hurt others. They’re not going to stop us from doing what we must to protect our own, Aaron, but that doesn’t mean we’re being given full reign. They won’t allow us to take any guilty party back to the States to face trial for what they’ve done… at least, not yet.”

“That’s fine,” Aaron replied with a calm that he could tell worried her. “The most important thing is that we get them home—we have the families of other taken wolves here. Spencer will be able to tell us if these people’s families are within the compound or not—that will get us the rest of the way.”

“Med-evacs on standby as well.” That was Dave, hefting his own bag in one hand to judge the balance. There was only one road between here and Junction, and it wasn’t made for fast travel. It was faster to move cross-country, but the journey would still take them almost two weeks on foot. And foot, in this strange backwards place, was the only option. “If we find them in the wilds, if they’ve moved on from Junction, we’ve got satellite phones to call for an Evac. We have to consider…”

“The pups,” Aaron said grimly. “If they have their children with them, we need to prioritise extraction.”

Elizabeth paused, her expression shifting “Why wouldn’t Emily have contacted Sanctuary earlier?” she murmured. “Travel to Junction from the North Slope? Were they on _foot_?”

“With pups,” breathed Dave. “I fucking hope not. How did they not starve?”

“They’re wolves.” Morgan looked puzzled. “Aren’t you guys made to survive on a wild diet? They probably hunted.”

“Enough to feed three pups without a pack?” Aaron swallowed, anger building again at the bastards who’d done this. “We’re nothing without our packs, Morgan. And that’s why we need to find them.”

They were walking as they talked, moving out from the shade of their quarters and out into the thin sunlight of a late autumn morning. And outside, their wolves waited. Despite Aaron being a stranger to them, essentially, they turned to face him as he stood before them.

It had been a long time since he’d openly led so many.

“Here we go,” Morgan said, seeing his escort to the side with the ATVs they’d be riding to keep up with the wolves, all laden down with the supplies the humans and wolves would need to travel comfortably, as well as emergency flares and radios. Two human agents who’d accompanied him stood there. Aaron and his wolves had a small group of Efisgans travelling with them, all large, brindle-backed wolves with wild eyes and savage smiles. But Aaron’s wolves weren’t looking to them for leadership.

He nodded to them as they looked to him, and then he led the way from Sanctuary and into the wilds.

 

* * *

 

Their travels took them through small settlements of shifters who stared wide-eyed at them. It took them across endless boreal forests, around lakes so large that they almost seemed to be oceans, across a vast landscape of shifting trees and a wildness so desolate and remote it took Aaron’s breath away.

They slept at night under the stars and they hunted for meat to complement their dry rations. When it rained, they were wet. Under the sun, they dried. They drank from streams and from rivers and shook grass and sand from their fur.

Despite the desperate race against time, Aaron would look up at a sky so full of stars every night that it seemed more white than black painted across the patchwork canvas, and he could appreciate why some people would choose this over the bustle and the stink of city life. Time felt cyclical here, not linear or progressive. The world slowed. It was peaceful, and also terrifying, how endless it seemed. How could he find one wolf in this expanse of nothing?

_It’s beautiful,_ Elizabeth said, black against the outcropping she was sitting upon as she looked up at the night sky. In the pitch of the moonless night, she was a shadow wolf. Her daughter’s shape and bearing with the darkness hiding where her fur was greying. Aaron looked at her and ached. _I can see why Emily loved it so much._

_Did she?_ Aaron asked, filled with a painful kind of curiosity for the young Emily that Elizabeth had known and Aaron never would. The Emily he knew was already reserved, already cautious, hiding her sharp edges behind a careful smile and polished manners.

_Oh, yes,_ Elizabeth reaffirmed. _We almost had to nail her window shut to stop her sneaking out. I let her, sometimes. Sometimes, when she was smaller and we were in Greece… the nights there were beautiful. The stars and the ocean and the valleys… sometimes I would hear her sneaking out, and I would let her go. I was so envious of her ability to still feel alive on those nights._

_She’s always been wild._ Aaron said this softly, but with a passion that thrilled him. _Her own wolf._

_I hated that about her, when she was in her teens,_ Elizabeth whispered, almost to herself. _Hated it. Thought it would be her undoing. I was so furious at myself for letting her slip away when she was smaller, to get a taste for the wild. But now, that may just be the thing that saves her life…_

Aaron knew exactly what to say here. He stood, padding quietly to her and bumping his muzzle against her ruff in a soft touch that he thought maybe the diplomat hadn’t had in a long time. After all, the Prentiss wolves ran with no pack.

Most of the Prentiss wolves.

_You raised her to survive,_ he said. _And survive she has._

And his dreams began to take the shape of those memories. A black wolf, sometimes a pup, sometimes half-grown and frantic with nervous energy, sometimes confident in her adulthood. Running, chasing, hunting, howling. And Aaron, always five steps behind. Always watching in quiet awe and being too afraid to call her name.

He snapped awake from one of those dreams one night, a strange one. He’d run and run and run and found himself slipping from boreal forests to plains, chasing an elk with lashing hooves. And he’d caught it. It had turned, lashed out.

He’d howled, unafraid, and someone had answered.

_What’s wrong?_ Dave asked, sitting in wolf form on the seat of Morgan’s ATV, paws draped over the handlebars. The humans were asleep. A yellow moon yawned above. Other wolves either slept or kept watch around, a silent clearing of dark shapes and slowly blinking eyes. _You smell shocked._

_Just a dream,_ Aaron said, and padded away to find somewhere to relieve himself.

Their clearing stood on the edge of the boreal forest. He blinked as the trees became thin and he stepped out on a ridge looking down across sweeping plains. Uneasy, he paced. They weren’t the same as his dream, he could already tell even in the moonlight. But they were close enough.

_We have to veer sharply north for a little,_ said a voice. One of the Efisgan wolves, also studying the way. _We’re dangerously close to the prairies._

_Is that bad?_ Aaron questioned warily.

_They’re a closed ecosystem. Predatory shifters aren’t to travel beyond Hearth._ The wolf nodded, jutting his muzzle towards a smudge of light on the dark horizon. _Especially not a pack. It allows the prey shifters a place where they can raise their young without fear of… accidents. Their culture tends them to allow their young to roam alone more so than ours does._

Aaron stared at the smudge of light, at the wayward prairies off beyond the plains below. The temperature shifted, dropping suddenly. Reminding them of winter and the oncoming snow. They shivered as one.

_Come find me,_ a memory whispered, and Aaron drifted towards the edge of the ridge. _Chase me._

He blinked and remembered another day, another chase. Two black wolves dancing together as they howled a commitment to each other. A huff slipped from his throat.

_Come find me…_

_Aaron?_

He jumped, whirling. Dave stared at him. _What?_ Aaron hissed, shaken, reaching for that voice once more.

_You okay?_ Dave asked again, peering past him down at the plains. _You feel… distant._

_(come find me)_

_I’m fine,_ Aaron lied, and shoved past him. He had to sleep. They still had a long way to go.

He slept and his dreams were filled with howls and the bleak image of a lonely, crooked tree.

 

* * *

 

He was fine, until they weren’t. It happened during the daytime. A bank of fog crowded the horizon. They pressed onwards through the plains with the forested hills that contained the settlement of Junction almost visible on the horizon ahead. And a feeling chased them. The other wolves were cheerful, vivid with the knowledge that they were going to find lost loved ones; alive and mostly unharmed, if a little shaken. They were optimistic. The Efisgan wolves spoke loudly of their fury that pack members had been harmed—Arthur Sinclair, Quinn’s father, told stories of his daughters loudly and often. Within a week, he had every wolf frothing at the mouth with anger that someone had dared harm the two girls he’d loved so much, had taken them from him. From their mother and their brother and their pack.

Arthur, Aaron thought, may well have completed the process Aaron himself had begun. He’d humanized those taken in a way that Aaron or Elizabeth, both so reticent with their feelings, simply couldn’t.

Aaron felt it first. Elizabeth second. Dave last.

Pain.

He whirled on his paws with a screaming bark that shook the crowd around them. Trailed out for almost a mile in an extensive line of steadily moving wolves, they all began to cluster back to stare as he whirled again towards some distant call of _no!_

And again.

_No!_

And pain.

_Emily!_ screamed Elizabeth, because there was only one other wolf in this country who could call them like that. And she _was_ calling. With a frantic, desperate scream of pain that was a feeling more so than a thought, it resonated further than any shout or howl could have. Touching on the very fringes of their consciousness.

It was a summoning of pack, and she needed them.

_Where is it coming from?_ Dave cried, but it was impossible to tell. She was just _too_ far.

The Efisgans looked at each other. Aaron stared at them, shivering and shaken.

Emily didn’t call again.

He closed his eyes and fought to breathe.

_Split into a dozen teams,_ the leader of the Efisgans said suddenly, the one who’d told Aaron about the prairies. _One Efisgan to a team, keep within howling distance of at least one team with an ATV with supplies. We move out in a starburst pattern—if they can hear her, she’s close enough for us to find._

_Could she be at Junction?_ Elizabeth asked, shaken by what they’d felt.

The wolf nodded. _Possibly. One team keeps going. The rest of us—we search. Remember. There could be pups relying on our speed._

Aaron barely waited for the go-ahead. Elizabeth and Morgan would continue with their team to Junction. As soon as wolves moved to follow Aaron, he reached for that call. For the whisper that his heart _knew_. Not as a friend or lover, but as _pack_. Pack first and foremost.

_Pack can always find pack,_ he cried, and began to run, ignoring the cries behind him. _Always!_

And the whisper turned to him.

_(come find me)_

_(please)_

* * *

_We need to veer west,_ the guide following Aaron’s pawprints over the boggy plains called. Aaron paused only for a second, his eyes narrowing as he peered ahead into a foggy dawn. _Skirt the prairies. They wouldn’t be in there._

_But what if she is…_ Arthur murmured. He’d followed Aaron, as had Dave. _She wouldn’t know about the restrictions._

Aaron veered. The voice was silent and he couldn’t argue with them right now, not when every sense in his body was attuned to searching for that thin thread of feeling. A patter of paws and Dave pulled up beside him, the two of them running with their heads low and eyes keen as the others fanned out behind them.

_Can you feel anything?_ Dave asked. Aaron shook his head, frustrated. _Aaron—you’re our leader. Her leader. You need to remember that feeling. That’s what’s going to find her. We’re wolves right now. Pack finding pack._

_Pack finding pack,_ Aaron thought grimly, and slowed. Closed his eyes. Huffed in the cold air and tasted snow. _We celebrate the snow…_

He kept his eyes closed, feeling his heart kick. The world narrowed to what he could hear, what he could scent. Mud and bracken and the spoor of deer. Other wolves. Rank breath, sweat, antiseptic smeared on a cut on Dave’s leg. He narrowed it further. To that glimmer of winter pressing down on them. He focused on the oncoming snow, the cold snap to the air. The sound of bird wings above.

The air was silent and still, noises carrying.

And so he raised his head and howled without being aware of consciously deciding to do so. A long, low thrum of sound that throbbed out into that silent world and startled birds and shocked rabbits and sent ears perking up for miles around. On these flat, open plains, all heads turned to him.

_I’m searching,_ that call said. _Where are you?_

He opened his eyes to silence as snow began to fall, dusting coats with white. Dave’s head was turned away. No howl answered them. Aaron felt hot and cold all at once; frightened and strong. His body ached with a pain that wasn’t his.

_We’re being watched,_ Dave said suddenly, his tail flicking.

Aaron turned his gaze to follow Dave’s. There was no line denoting where the plains ended and prairie began. The wolves just seemed to know. Some aspect of the land there told them _this place isn’t yours._

Dark eyes watched them from the bowed grass; dark eyes and wide ears above trembling legs. Far enough away that the creature felt safe from their jaws.

Close enough that it shouldn’t have felt safe, not so close to the edge of its world.

Why would it come so close?

Aaron glanced to Arthur and their guide. They weren’t looking. He slipped away, Dave following silently, and walked into the prairies and towards the shivering fawn. Not just a fawn… a shifter. Female, young. Very young.

It didn’t flee as they approached.

_What are you doing?_ came a shocked whisper. Their guide. _She’s probably never seen a wolf shifter before. Come back. You’re going to frighten her._

_She’s not alone,_ Dave replied. And she wasn’t. Other shapes flickered in the grass behind her, just small enough to keep out of sight with their mottled beige and white coats.

_She’s the bravest._ Aaron stopped barely three feet in front of her, and lowered himself to the ground. Head on his paws and very aware that he dwarfed her in size. She reeked of fear, her nostrils flaring red. _You’re being very brave. Very, very brave, little one._

She didn’t respond. Just swallowed and moved about on slender legs, eyes rolling as she looked from one predator to the next. And then she looked to Aaron and reached out with a small, new mind to brush against his, an alien touch.

Not words. Nothing in words could denote what she showed him, she simply didn’t understand how. She showed him his dark coat against the night as he walked across the plains searching for his missing wolves. She showed him a vision of himself that was fierce and terrifying and made her want to run for home, because she was being terribly naughty, creeping out this far on a dare and following the wolves. A small touch of glee at how the other children in her herd would _envy_ her bravery.

And then, the glee shifted to a warmth. Black coat against black, and suddenly Aaron wasn’t an adult anymore in this child’s mind, but a pup. A tan-coated pup who didn’t speak their language but played hide and chase games with them like he was one of them—just like them. Chasing a melon about that they’d gifted him with a single white-socked paw, helping them shove it down a slope and giggling as it split open on a rock below.

And then their friend, in a darker time. Howling for them with thin little calls that yipped oddly at the end. The pup was hungry and the pup was sad and the only thing he’d managed to get across to his strange new companions was that he was lost and looking for a black-coated wolf.

The fawn stepped back, shivering less, and sent one last picture. An image of a stag watching her, lowering his head. Nuzzling her. Becoming human and gathering her up into his strong arms, safe and warm. Her father—she feared the loss of him and so feared that her friend had lost his own.

Aaron looked to Dave. _She knows where they are,_ Aaron said. _She knows their pup._

_Aaron,_ Dave said. The fawn was skipping away, turning to face them.

Leading them into the prairie.

_She knows where they are,_ Aaron repeated, closing his eyes for a heartbeat. _Come on._

Wordless, the other wolves followed. And Aaron reached for that quiet part of himself, the part that had whispered _come find me_ and instead he spoke solely to it.

_(we’re coming)_

* * *

The fawns led them in a gambolling, nervous line to a campsite. For a long moment, Aaron thought bleakly that they were too late. Snow fell in a thick coating over the clearly untouched clearing, smothering any scents. The only lines that marred the dusty white were the narrow shapes of tiny hooves.

But then, the lead fawn shifted. From a gawky baby deer to an equally gawky five-year old, she was thin and freckled and trembled very much like her animal counterpart did as she danced barefoot and naked about on the snow, nose scrunched and toes purpling. Darting forward, she hunkered by a weedy looking tree, pointed within, and then bolted away. With a flicker, she was a deer again and brayed softly before vanishing into the undergrowth. Something larger answered nearby, and the children scattered.

The wolves were alone.

Or not.

Aaron was staring at the shadowed base of a tree, so he saw the slim movement within. Nosing about by a cooling fire-pit, the others didn’t see.

He crept forward on silent paws, snuffing at the wet recesses of the roots. A hollow wound in the earth, and it stunk of wolf and musk and a fallow sickness that made his gut cramp with sympathy. Within that hole, something had sickened.

Within that hole, something lingered now.

He sniffed again, the sound loud in the muffled silence of the snow, and heard a soft drawing back within the hole. Something creeping down into the depths.

_Is this a… watermelon?_ Dave asked, digging broken husks of the gnawed-up fruit out of the snow. It dragged up something else with it as well as Aaron turned to look at him; a rug that was muddy and slick with wet and half-frozen to the ground. _Christ. Aaron, this stinks of Emily. It’s hers. It’s hers for sure._

_Mama,_ whispered the hole, a thin whine creeping out.

Their heads all snapped to the hole.

_Holy fuck,_ Arthur hissed, creeping back. _There’s a pup in there._

And, suddenly, the silence was shattered.

Howling. Frantic, agonised howling. A pulsing, shrieking call that made every wolf in earshot drop with a gasp; the call of a mother separated from her pup. A mother sensing danger.

The pup burst out from the hole under Aaron’s paws with a snarl and a yap and tried to dash past him. Aaron barely caught it, teeth gentle with the skinny kid’s ruff as he stopped it from bolting out into the wilds. _Woah!_ he cried, seeing Dave moving to cut off any sudden escapes, but the pup let loose a high-pitched scream that had their ears snapping back with dismay. _Hey! Calm down, we’re not going to hurt you! We’re going to find your mom!_

_Aaron!_ barked Dave, and then yelped.

Aaron spun. Stared as a dark-tan male wolf burst out of the thicket with a snarl and slammed into Dave’s side, going down with a blur of teeth and fur. There was no warning, no announcement of intent to attack. The two went down, and they went down hard and stayed there. But Aaron couldn’t help because moments later, death on black paws hurtled into his side. He was upright until he wasn’t, feeling his ribs smack the tree as he went down, the pup tearing itself loose from his grip and slashing out at him with his jaws, puppy teeth sinking into his muzzle before dashing away.

_I’ll kill you,_ snarled the wolf that had him, and sunk her teeth into his throat in a crushing, tearing bite. _You’ll die for touching him!_

He knew her voice.

They went down and her jaws were on his throat, her eyes boring into his. And he knew her. Of course, he knew her. He could never not know her. Because he knew her, he didn’t fight back. He just relaxed into her crushing grip, went limp, and said, _Emily._

She stopped. The biting pressure on his throat lifted, just slightly. He watched her narrow her eyes; watched her widen them once more.

She let go. Slid off him with a _thump_ to the ground as her legs gave way.

_Emily,_ he said again. They stood frozen. A branch cracked to their side as Dave shook the male wolf off and limped over. She backed away, swinging her head from Aaron to Dave, her scent twisting and turning sharp and panicked, her concave sides visibly heaving.

_Hey, sweetie,_ Dave said gently, because Aaron was staring at her now and couldn’t stop. At the wounds that littered her body. At the raggedness of her fur, clumps missing. At the black iron collar around her throat, rubbing the fur away and leaving raw, swollen skin. The way her legs bowed under her weight—the weight that was so much less than it had been. He could count every fucking _rib_ , trace the line of her collarbone with his eyes. Just skin stretched over the frame of a wolf. If it wasn’t for her eyes, those gorgeous, dark eyes, he might not have realized it was her. And Dave was still talking, still walking towards her: _Emily, love. It’s us. We’re real. Look at me. We’re real._

_Dave?_ she whispered. Her voice. Aaron gasped at it. It was her voice. Shaken and thin but _hers_. _I…_

She stopped.

Turned to Aaron.

_Oh,_ she said, and collapsed. Eyes closed, out like a light. He didn’t even think.

Barely before she’d hit the ground, he’d shifted. Arms wrapped around her; she was a whisper of a wolf in a body that was unfamiliar to him. And he held her close, against his chest, and could feel her heart still beating.

Dave shifted. “It’s okay, Aaron,” he soothed, looking stunned. Aaron bowed over the woman he’d lost and found and couldn’t lose again, staring at her still. “Aaron, we got her. We got her. She’s alive, we found her.”

Aaron realized he was crying but he couldn’t stop. Didn’t really care to stop. She deserved every tear. “Call for help,” he said through his tears, and pressing his mouth against her fur. “Get us help.”


	33. Harlequin Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Nine: Chapter Thirty-Three to Thirty-Five**

She woke in a white-washed room with a stranger leaning over her.

She reacted accordingly.

Red on the mundane walls and she screamed her rage as it clicked that her puppy wasn’t there—that she was a dead wolf standing on a white bed in a white room in the faded memory of her nightmarish past, and her puppy was gone. She screamed once more and dug her paws in as she lashed out again, feeling ripping, feeling tearing. Wires from her skin and tubes from her legs and blood sprayed from both as flesh slipped between her hungry teeth.

She hated and she raged and she _remembered_.

_You won’t take him too,_ she promised the man, who was shouting and cringing and using his bloodied arms to cover his cracked-glass face. _You won’t take my son. You won’t drug and rape and—_

A dream walked through the door. She wavered. Stared.

Turned her back on it, on yet another simple hallucination. Because she was caught again—she had to be—and it was simply her mind manifesting the only coping mechanism that had helped her previously within the grasp of the creeping compound. Her back to the black wolf staring, despite how much it _horrified_ her to be so vulnerable, she snarled at the man who reached for a syringe to sedate the mad wolf, blood patterning his white coat. White white white and she’d never hated a colour more.

She lunged again and he leapt back with a wolf’s sharp speed, shifting in a heartbeat. A clipboard clattered and he shook torn and twisted clothes that almost sent him toppling to the ground on long, elegant legs; she staggered back with shock as the strange man was suddenly a stag with three tines per antler shaking dangerously in her direction.

Images flickered in her mind, distant and warped. Strange visions from a stranger mind. She backed away until she remembered the illusion behind her and stopped, feeling another clawing voice trying to attract her attention.

_My son!_ she snarled, stag or not, confused and wobbly and suddenly aware she was pissing out blood from where the IVs had torn roughly free. _My son, you prong-horned fuck! Where’s my son?_

Her mind received an image of a fawn, an alien touch. The stag shifter trying to communicate, despite the furious shake of her head. An image of her boy. The two huddled together outside a rough-hewn cabin, tan sides pressed close. Another image—Oliver asleep in a bed made of hessian and grasses, a scarred pup with a girl’s arms around him. Two babies sleeping soundly. Water sat beside their bed.

_They’re caring for him,_ the hallucination said, using her shock to slip past her defences. _He was frightened by the hospital setting when they tried to keep him here._

_Why do you have him?_ she asked the stag, shaking more. Ignoring the voice. Hallucinations didn’t speak. They never spoke. They couldn’t be speaking now. Gritted her teeth against the possibility, even as her tail tucked close between her trembling hind legs and her hips sunk submissively down towards the tiled floor. A weak wolf shaken by shadows. She hated herself too.

_Emily, please don’t be scared of me,_ gasped the hallucination, and she finally turned to face her madness head on. Aaron Hotchner, the wolf himself, stood firm in front of her. He looked real. He smelled real. His eyes were soft and pained and his voice sounded like she was driving a stake into his heart with every supplication she showed him. That didn’t stop her from cringing away, didn’t stop the whine that slipped from panting jaws, didn’t stop her from following her hips until she was belly-down on the ground with her heart stalling and threatening to stop.

_I’m dead,_ she told the hallucination weakly. _I’ve died. Oliver is alone. I’m dead. You’re Death, come to take me away._ She felt thin and insubstantial, the sound of hooves on the tiles distantly sounding. A million miles away. She could hear laugher outside, chattering voices. More hallucinations. She wasn’t captured, not at all. Foggily, she drifted. Dead. This was it. The end of her story. _I’m dead._

_You’re mildly sedated and still unwell,_ said the hallucination. _You were in incredible pain. Emily, please. Look at me. You’re alive._

_No, I’m not,_ she said, and hated liars.

_You’re hurt and sick. You need surgical attention that they can’t give you in Hearth._

_In Hell,_ she corrected, and thought that the tiles were colder than they should be. Leeching icy fingers up into her body, her heart. Maybe Hell was the compound. The North. Hell, she thought, would be snowy and dark. And she’d be alone there.

_I’m real,_ he said.

_Fuck off!_ she screamed. Snapped. Was sorry for snapping. Tried to run. Fell.

_Don’t touch her!_ snarled her memory of Aaron Hotchner, and she turned her head blearily to find the doctor as human again, leaning in with a frown and a silver-sharp needle. She almost welcomed it.

_A little more,_ she wanted to ask him, just in case she was wrong and she wasn’t dead. _Stop this heart. Stop it finally. Send me to join Spencer and Felicity, where I can’t fail anyone anymore._

But if she wasn’t dead…

“Emily,” said a familiar voice, the door opening once more. The Ghost of Hotch stepped aside to let Dave walk in, dressed warmly in clothes that were stiff and new, his arms full of a tan-furred bundle that wiggled and squeaked and called to her.

_Mama!_ cried Oliver, kicking at Dave’s firm grip around his thin torso. _Mama, gimme Mama! Lemme go, please!_

_Oliver,_ she whispered, and sagged boneless onto the floor. Alive. Here.

With Dave.

“He’s okay, sweetheart,” Dave whispered, crouching and shuffling awkwardly across the floor until he was kneeling by her muzzle, still holding Oliver tight. “He’s so okay, and so beautiful. Look at him. Breathe. Look at how strong and okay he is.” And a hand crept towards her, releasing her son and cupping her cheek as she lifted her muzzle from the deathly cold tiles and stretched desperately towards the shivering pup. Suddenly loose, Oliver tumbled to the ground and sprung at her, desperately wrapping ungainly paws around her shoulders and huddling close, gasping into her fur with his tail wagging madly between his legs.

“God, fuck,” Dave murmured. Emily looked at him and saw his eyes were wet, red, his mouth slack with something raw. “He’s all you, Emily. A brave little soldier.”

Emily breathed once. Swallowed.

Realized he was _here_. She pressed into his hand as it curled around her face, his other coming to support the other side. He was here, real, stabilizing.

She collapsed forward into his arms with a moan, huddling as close as she could into his enveloping arms. His scent billowing around her, encompassing her, making her shake and sob harder as she realized he wasn’t letting go. He wouldn’t let her slip away. Hands stroked her sides, wrapped around her, tangled tight in matted fur.

_I’m sorry,_ she moaned, sides heaving despite her dry eyes. _I’m sorry, Dave, I tried. I tried to come home! I tried to bring them all home, I never wanted to leave. I never wanted to leave you!_ And she was babbling, helpless, begging him for a forgiveness he was deaf to and so couldn’t give her.

_Oh, Emily…_ whispered the ghost that she refused to acknowledge, turning her head into Dave’s warm chest and burying it deep to avoid seeing how the ghost’s shoulders were slumped and his ears folded back.

And she stayed like that; stayed like that as her breathing slowed and a seditious, warm calm spread throughout her body from her chest and out to every part of her. It loosened her, made her heavy and slow and a morose kind of relaxed as she sagged against Dave. “Shh shh,” he kept murmuring, those warm, wide hands stroking over and over and over her mottled sides, spreading that calm behind them. Her eyes heavy and her heart heavier, she felt herself drifting into his quiet whisperings, Oliver breathing gently by her side. “Shh, Emily. It’s okay. We’re okay. We’re here. Your son is here.”

“Oliver,” said a human’s voice, and Emily gasped with the pain. Ethan. Ethan, not Spencer. “His name is Oliver.” Emily opened her eyes and glanced up just in time to see Dave’s eyes narrow and flicker towards the other shifter. Ethan stood in the doorway, his expression unfathomable behind the lines of grief.

“Oliver,” Dave repeated, curling a finger and holding his hand out for the pup to sniff warily at. “Hello, Oliver.”

_Who is that?_ Oliver asked, hackles up. _Mama, who? Bad cat?_

_Not a bad cat,_ Emily replied tiredly. _He’s pack. He’s part of our pack._

Oliver was quiet, until: _What is that?_

And she was looking at the impossible wolf standing by Dave’s side, so she saw the way he flinched back from that innocent question.

“Med-Evac is on its way,” Ethan continued blandly, using the same empty-nothing voice he’d used back at the compound with Lionel and the cult wolves. “They say it will be here within the hour, under clearance to take her back to Sanctuary Town.”

Med-Evac. A helicopter.

Her heart began to hammer, her head hammering with it. White noise hummed in her ears as the impossible wolf shifted and became an impossible man, Aaron standing and facing Ethan with a cool stare that shook her. She’d never hallucinated him as a man before.

“Good,” he replied in a voice she knew was his coldest. “We’ll take her from here, Reid.”

_Reid._

_No,_ she said, and struggled up. Dave let her go, his eyebrows furrowing together with worry. _No. No. I won’t. I won’t leave._

“Woah, Emily,” Aaron said, turning and holding his hand out towards her. “It’s okay. We’re just—”

_Not taking us away!_ Emily screamed, baring her teeth and howling her anger at the idea. _You’re not taking me, you’re not taking my fucking puppy, you’re not taking **anyone**!_

He shifted before she slammed into him and they rolled back, his side hitting the wall and knocking the air from his lungs. There was shouting around her, Dave and Ethan and Oliver, but she bit down with a snarl and shrieked with fury. _You won’t take me from him! You can’t—he was worried you would and you can’t, you won’t! I won’t go in another cage!_

_Emily! We’re not taking you from anyone!_ Aaron wheezed, using his paws to hold her away from his bared throat. He smelled like himself. A delicious, powerful scent that made her feel soft and warm and protected and _infuriated._ She slashed at that scent with her claws and her teeth and was gratified to feel flesh give way shallowly under both. _Emily, stop! Your pup will come too, we’re not leaving him here! We’re not leaving anyone here!_

_You’re leaving Spencer!_ she howled. _You’re leaving him! You don’t care about him! And Riley, you’re leaving Riley, we **can’t** leave Riley. How dare you—you have no fucking right you arrogant—_

_Spencer is dead,_ Ethan said, shifted now and pacing around them, his voice full of pain. Under her paws, Aaron froze. _You know he’s dead. You’re confused and sick. He’s dead._

_No, he’s not!_ Oliver cried, growling at Ethan. _Liar! Liar liar liar! Mama, get Daddy! Don’t leave Daddy, or Rilly, or Felik!_

_You’re leaving Felicity,_ Emily gasped, closing her eyes against a burst of pain and a giddy rush of dizzy-hot that left her reeling. _They took her away._

_Who took her?_ Aaron was panting, his heart thumping under her. Not moving anymore, just letting her sag onto his firm body. _Who was taken?_

_Felicity._ Emily said the name like a prayer, remembering her cries, the howls, the heat.

_Riley,_ Ethan corrected softly. _They took Riley. Not Felicity. Felicity is dead too, Emily. She died months ago. You told me this._

_Liar,_ Oliver whispered, or maybe Emily. **_Liar!_**

“We need to sedate her.” A stranger, his face tattooed just like the first doctor. A tattoo, she dimly realized, not a broken face at all. “She’s hysterical and dangerous.”

_No!_ Aaron barked, shaking her off and standing over her as she slid to the ground, too weak to stand on her own paws. It had taken all the strength she had just to attack him, to protect her family. And she wasn’t done protecting them. _She just needs time, not further medication. When will the Evac arrive?_

_Touch my pup and die,_ Emily said weakly. _Leave Oliver alone. Leave Spencer alone. Just… we don’t want to be broken…_

Hazy at the edges, her world was dimming to the wolf standing astride her and his dark, dark eyes. She began to float. To fall. To focus on nothing but his voice as it said _look at me what do you need what do you—_

To focus on a new voice.

“Where is she?”

A new voice she knew.

_Where is she? Where is Emily?_

_Mom!_ Emily called desperately, fighting the madness and the pain and the misting notion that her life was slipping through the cracks in her fingers despite her trying to cling to it with every last beat of her hopeless heart. _Mom…_

_Mom._

“Look at me.”

Emily opened sandpaper eyes to find her head being held by familiar hands that had never been quite so gentle. Elizabeth’s hair was tied back into the messiest bun Emily had ever seen on her, her face was streaked with dirt, and her cheeks were wet. There was a long moment where Emily wasn’t sure if she was about to be hugged or scolded, and felt strangely like a child once more.

“Oh, my baby,” Elizabeth, impossibly, whispered, and stared at Emily like she was returned from the dead. And Emily wondered; how would she feel if it was her?

If it was her holding Felicity, back from the grave?

And there it was.

Breaking point.

She broke completely. The tears she’d lost she now found with a vengeance. This wasn’t the grieving she’d done in the ground, hiding from the world. It wasn’t as explosive. This was grief accumulated, a weeping, purulent abscess finally lanced to release what lingered mournfully within. Absolute helplessness.

For the first time since she’d been taken, almost three years before, Emily let herself do nothing but cry, giving herself over completely to the woman who held her. Because, she realized, she was in her mother’s arms. She was safe.

She was home.

When she was spent and weakened by her vulnerability, she let Dave and her mom ease her back up onto a non-bloodied bed, placing Oliver aside her. As though this was a new beginning, she felt dazed, renewed. Aware that Elizabeth had been speaking to her, rocking her, but unable to remember exactly what had been said.

“You got the collar off,” Elizabeth said, running a trembling hand over Emily’s neck. Emily stared hungrily at her mother, noting the deep lines around her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before and the grey in her brunette hair. “Can she shift?”

“Unlikely,” the doctor replied, as Emily twitched and twisted her head around to try and look at her bared throat. Suddenly aware that her skin was exposed to the cold air, her body lighter, her breathing easier. There was no rasp of metal at her throat, no cold touch on the back of her neck. It was _gone_. “She’s exhausted and ill and has numerous infected wounds that would cause her agonising pain if she forces a shift to human without them being treated first. Not to mention, the scarring left by the collar suggests it’s been in place for a long time—her body needs energy and time to readjust to a human morph.”

“Okay,” said Elizabeth, and began to unbutton her jacket. Emily stared. What was…?

Without a qualm, Elizabeth stripped and shifted, Emily watching with stunned disbelief, trying to remember the last time she’d seen her mother walk as a wolf. Fur that was a shifting illusion of grey and white and the same eyes Emily knew so innately, Elizabeth shook out her coat and reared to place her paws on the edge of Emily’s bed, watching her daughter carefully.

_Baby, you need to let us help you,_ Elizabeth sent, leaning her muzzle atop Emily’s. Emily was floored by the _love_ in that touch. The love and the reckless, hopeless relief. _You need to let us take you home. You, and my gorgeous grandson._

_I can’t,_ Emily breathed. _Mom, I can’t. I’m… I can’t. Spencer. I need… Spencer. I promised him… and my Riley, my daughter, I…_ Dangerously close to begging.

Elizabeth was still watching her closely, but it wasn’t Elizabeth who answered with a tender, _Promised him what?_ Emily looked at Aaron, shuddering once and accepting that if Dave was here and Mom as well, then maybe… just maybe… Aaron was too. But accepting was different than rejoicing. She didn’t yet understand what his presence meant. Her brain was just too fried. _Emily,_ he said again. _What did you promise Spencer?_

_That I’d carry him if he couldn’t walk anymore,_ she replied, wavering. Was it her who promised him that, or had he promised her? _That he’d never lose me._ That was definite. _That I’d bring him home…_

Silence. Ethan made a low, mournful sound, a kind of groan that tore from him.

_Daddy_ , whispered Oliver, and hurt loudly.

Emily looked directly at Aaron. And, cruelly, she slipped into his mind. His familiar, proud, powerful mind. Almost drowned in the rush of _home_ that greeted her. _Aaron_ , she sent, and then followed it with fever-fogged memories.

Spencer. Just Spencer. Just his smile and his hands and his love and hers. Aaron was frozen, watching them be a family, a pack, watching them desperately trying to come home in a slideshow of snapshot memories. Watching them fall in love; watching them fight to not fall out of it again.

And then a final memory of a crooked, lonely tree.

_I promised,_ she said again, watching that ant march across a stiffened white-socked paw again.

_So did I,_ Aaron finally replied, and Emily frowned as she tried to puzzle through what that meant. _Dave, get the wolves. We’re moving out._

_Where are you going?_ Elizabeth asked. _Med-Evac will be here within the hour and I fought tooth and nail to get you on that extraction._

Aaron touched Emily’s mind, one final tentative touch. A tendril of _pack_.

_We’re going to find him. He’s coming home with us._

And Emily finally, knowing he meant it, let herself fall. Aaron would do it. Aaron would bring Spencer home. Then, he’d go get Riley.

And then it would be over.


	34. Scavenger Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** **

She refused the Med-Evac until Spencer was found, and no one argued with her. There was a tinge of nervousness in the air from every wolf who faced her, a bite of disquiet. They approached her like one would a wild animal; cautiously, and with an escape route planned. But then again, wasn’t that exactly what she was?

She _was_ a wild animal and she reminded them all of that. Even Aaron. Even Dave.

Even Elizabeth.

_You need to come in out of the cold,_ Elizabeth begged, pacing around Emily as she hunched outside the settlement limits, hunchbacked against the light snow that dusted her coat and with her eyes locked on a faded horizon. _Emily, you’re still ill._

_No._

There she stayed. For the first hour and then the second, until the search parties began to return empty pawed and handed. Not a trace of her partner and mate could be found under the slick surface of the once-thawed and re-frozen fields of the prairies. There were hundreds of crooked, dead trees dotting the horizon. Scents were obscured by the wet, metal stink of ice water. The snow kept shifting to a freezing rain and back again, turning the terrain treacherous and lacing the air with a bitter chill. But she didn’t care. She knew there was no way they’d let her join the search parties. She was too afraid of leaving Oliver behind to demand that they _did_ allow her. If that meant she stood guard for their return, then that was what she would do. Pieces of her heart were scattered all over Efisga, and she was desperate to try and gather them back together into some kind of desperate pile, some show of _this is what I’ve lost._

But that wasn’t all that drove her. That wasn’t what was pushing her back into the bleary madness that the fever kept fogging her thoughts with.

That wasn’t the reason for the choking guilt or the determined self-recrimination.

What kept her out in the rain and the snow without a break or relief, despite the wounds that still wept and the exhaustion that sickened her, was the memory of a white-socked paw and an ant marching across it.

It was the memory of that paw twitching as she’d turned to walk away from him. A flicker of a heartbeat under a thin chest, Oliver’s ears twitching at the sound. The slightest shift of his chest as they’d fled.

It was the memory of something she hadn’t told Aaron and couldn’t tell Ethan. Oliver knew it—but Oliver didn’t have the vocabulary to betray her. It was a memory she’d tried and succeeded to twist in her own mind in order to push herself to flee the compound wolves, but that wouldn’t be distorted any longer.

_Daddy heart tick tick,_ Oliver had whispered to her before Emily had told her mom to take him back inside, out of the cold and into the company of his fawn friend. _Tick tick tick. Is Daddy home yet?_

_Not yet,_ Emily replied softly. _Soon_. _He’ll be home… soon…_

Because Spencer hadn’t been dead when she’d run from him. He couldn’t have been. She must have been mistaken. No matter how many of the search parties came back without a trace, no matter how many of them repeated that they hadn’t picked up a sign of any pack or wolf on the huge expanse of the plains, she had to believe that.

Her mind was silent in the corner that she privately thought of as _his_ , where their pair bond usually hummed, but she knew. He hadn’t been dead when she’d run from him, despite her need at the time to believe he was. She was sure. He couldn’t have been. She _must_ have been wrong, somehow…

She must have been. She refused to believe he’d died alone.

She waited.

 

* * *

 

Of all the search parties that returned, Aaron’s was last. Emily counted as they passed her; groups of three and four who avoided her gaze. Wolves and deer walking together, a strange line of beasts slipping out of the hazy rain and past with barely a word.

Dave returned alone. He’d kept searching as his team had given up. Unlike the others, he approached her.

_Nothing,_ he said quietly. _Emily, are you sure he’s…_

_Yes,_ she said bluntly. _He’s here somewhere, Dave. I left him here. I…_ She stopped and huffed, fixating again on the crooked tree and its sad shape below. _I…_ Stopping again. Voice cracking. She became suddenly aware of the cold and the misting rain and the howl of wind across the plains. It was a manic noise. Demonic. Illustrating just how huge the cavernous world around them was, as though their endless journey across the barren world hadn’t already hammered that home.

Dave watched her, something dark lurking in his gaze. _He’s not dead, is he?_ he murmured, his voice a sudden shock. _Emily, you don’t believe he’s dead._

_I did,_ she said, truthfully. _I do,_ she lied.

Silence broken by the patterning rain. A panel clanged nearby. Someone called for a wayward child, ushering them out of the dangerous darkness.

_Fuck,_ Dave swore. _When did you see him last?_

She closed her eyes. _I don’t know. I… lost time. I had to run. I had to. They were coming… they came. They took our daughter, they took our Riley… I didn’t run fast enough and if he’s dead now he’s… he’s…_

A cold muzzle pressed against hers. His voice, when it came, was weary: _You should have told us. We would have searched longer if we didn’t believe we were looking for a bo…_ His turn to trail off and she winced as she heard it; he still believed they were looking for a body. Whether Spencer had been alive when she’d seen him last or not.

A clock clanged midnight, old-fashioned and disconcertingly alien. She jolted and whined with surprise and guilt and a sickly dizzy misery. _I know,_ she whispered, _but I was hoping I was…_

Wrong? That he was dead to save her from this sensation of failure?

Right? That maybe she’d left him, that in the end, it hadn’t really helped anyone, had it?

Either way, she was selfish and cruel. Not a wild wolf, or a human. There was nothing human about her actions, and nothing as clean as a wolf.

She turned away from Dave and the reminder of everyone she’d failed, looking back to the foggy skyline. Only visible because of the crack of a yellow moon slipping out from thick clouds, catching distant movement travelling closer. Shadows, moving slowly. As they came closer, she saw the reluctance in their tread. And horror stole back into her life.

They were the last team. It was midnight. Above them, a winter moon blinked down. Perhaps a sun would have been crueller. Perhaps it would have been cleaner. Maybe it would have made this unreal.

And, proving how she was a nothing wolf with no ability to be human or canine anymore, as Aaron walked directly towards her, she felt nothing from his mind. No grief, no shock, no outrage, despite seeing all these things clearly in the lines of his body. His mind was closed to her. Dave’s too, even as he took a step backwards and whined, his tail slinking down.

She felt nothing.

She was… nothing.

_Where is he?_ she asked.

Aaron stopped.

_Where is he?_ again.

_Emily…_

_Where. Is. He._

The wind howled. Paws, behind them. She snuffed the icy air. Ethan. Elizabeth. Other wolves she didn’t know, alerted by a nearby watcher to the final team’s slow approach.

_We found a body,_ said a stranger suddenly, one of Aaron’s team. Ruthless because he didn’t know she was mad and on the cusp of growing madder. _There was a tree sort of nearby—it could have been it._

_Could?_ Emily asked coldly. _It either was or it wasn’t. Did you scent? His fur is unmistakable—_

_Emily,_ said Aaron again, hoarsely. He moved closer and she stood with twin cracks of her front knees and dodged away, fleet in the numb wash of nothing that shoved away her pain.

_—it’s butterscotch, a gorgeous honey tan. How could you not have seen it? Even under the moon, it shines. His paws are the same, barely darker, except for one—it’s white. He has one white sock. Did you see his one white sock? Did you check—_

_Emily…_

_His mask is lighter than his fur, as is his chest and belly. He has a black dorsal stripe ending in a black-tipped tail. Aaron, you know this. You know all of this. He’s slender and strong and brilliant and… and unmistakable. Unforgettable… y-you have to…_

No one said her name this time.

_You have to know him,_ she whispered, more to herself than anything else. _I know him. I’ll **always** know him… he’s my mate, I-I… love him._

_Oh, baby,_ Elizabeth sighed.

_The body has been… scavenged on…_ Aaron said finally, and didn’t look her in the eyes as he said it. She went, if possible, colder. The wind dropped. Peace fell on the prairies. _Vultures and foxes, mostly. There’s very little to use as identification._

_Bones and fur are scattered everywhere,_ another wolf added, ears flicking. _We didn’t even find the sku—_

Aaron snarled and snapped, a warning.

But it was enough. Emily nodded.

_Okay,_ she said, and then: _show me._

Shock. She didn’t give a fuck.

_Show me._

Aaron snarled again, this time at a wolf who’d made a noise of dismay. _Okay,_ he said, and walked to her. Their muzzles touched. It was unneeded. He was comforting her. She refused to be comforted, stiffly resisting his touch.

And he showed her.

Bones glinting white under the yellow moon, kicked up from the thin layer of snow. They glistened with a thin layer of frost, almost beautiful. She could see where the wolves had dug at the dirt and the snow, finding more bones, more fur. The suggestion of a half-gnawed wolfish flank sunk into the mud. Fur still attached, turned dark by wet and shadow.

But, if it was underneath a hot, scavenging sun, it could be tan. Perhaps even butterscotch.

Without a word, she turned and left. No one called after her. No one stopped her.

Ethan was already gone. She saw a dark tan shape flicker past the outskirts and vanish into the prairies without looking back, leaving a straight line of pawprints. She knew he wouldn’t return. His brother was gone. What was left to stay for, besides a pup who looked far too much like the dead and the wolf who’d killed him?

She found Oliver in the home of the doctor. Both the doctor and his wife shot upright when she nudged the door open, whuffing for her son and grabbing him unceremoniously by the scruff. As she slipped away with her pup, she heard hooves approaching. Someone else could tell the man why she fled him.

She found the medical centre dim and sleepy. The on-call nurse dozed without waking at her silent entry through the unlocked doors. Oliver was quiet and yawning in her grip, uncomfortable but never complaining.

He spoke when she dragged the bedding from her bed and pushed it under, creating a dark little nest against the wall where she could curl with him safe and warm at her belly. _This is fun,_ he declared, climbing in next to her and settling down before touching her mind and tensing. _Mama sad? Where Daddy?_

_Not coming,_ she said softly, licking the scars on his muzzle and feeling something shift and crack in her chest. Oliver looked confused. _He’s not coming, baby._

_Why not?_

Why not? What a question. How could she answer that?

_Because Mama made it so he couldn’t._ Damning. But true. _And now he’s gone._

_Gone like Rilly?_

Undoubtedly. Emily closed her eyes. If she’d failed Spencer, of _course_ she’d fail Riley too. And she’d already proven that she was far too selfish to leave her son behind and walk the land alone, back along the long, cold path to the Northern Slope where the seals and bears and wolves lived in an endless night.

Oliver whined suddenly, sharp and hurting. _Oh no,_ he gasped. _Not gone like Rilly. Gone like Felik. Always gone! Always!_

Emily nodded.

Hazel eyes stared at her, huge and betrayed. Dangerously shiny. _But I don’t want him to be,_ the pup said desperately. _Don’t want!_

Any moment now, he’d realize it was her. Realize she was the one who kept taking the ones he loved from him. He’d walk away. Maybe to his deer friends. Maybe they could care for him like she couldn’t. Maybe she was always destined to be alone, and midway between woman and wolf.

But he didn’t. He cuddled close, made a noise like he was finally learning what loss was, and said, _But you won’t leave, Mama. Not ever._

_No,_ she whispered, she whispered, a promise that was strangely forceful, despite no longer having the right to make further broken promises. _No, not ever._

_‘Kay,_ he finished with, and curled up tight. Still awake, just hiding his tears. He’d learned that early.

There was a noise by the door. She looked and saw a shadow watching her.

Aaron.

But she ignored him. What could she say? _A woman loved you once, but that woman died. I have nothing left to offer you, not anymore._

Because it was over.

And he was still dead.

 

* * *

 

The trail led in a wobbly line out from the shaded opening of their den and down towards the ridge where the rabbits ran.

At least until Emily woke properly, and realized that the trail was a line of muddy pawprints on tile; the ridge a hump of rashly discarded blanket. The only thing similar between now and then, that bright morning at the beginning of their hopeful journey, was that there was one less pup against her than there should have been.

_Riley’s out,_ Emily said to no one in particular, and then stood on shaky legs. No Spencer rocketed past to fetch their wayward child. Instead, the door burst inward and Elizabeth appeared, her eyes wild and scent frantic.

“Doctor Duchant can’t find Celeste,” she exclaimed, staring down at Emily. “And Oliver is nowhere to be seen.”

Emily shivered and shivered and said nothing.

“Emily?” Her mom stepped forward, the fear shifting and being replaced by frustration. “You have to get up! Come on—I _understand_ you’re upset about Spencer and still sick, but you’re the only one Oliver will respond to mentally! We can’t find Ethan—you’re the only wolf he’ll come to!”

Emily didn’t move.

Elizabeth shot her a look that was part disgust mixed with shame. “Okay,” she said quietly, and left behind the lingering scent of anger. Emily waited for her footsteps to fade before moving.

In the silence that followed, she became a silent, wild wolf again, and slipped soundlessly from the medical centre and through the whirlwind of activity that was the small settlement searching for the two young.

“You don’t understand—” a thickly accented voice was arguing as its owner strode past. Emily recognised Aaron’s soft reply, and shrunk back under a pile of firewood, hidden in the gloom. Aaron would stop her. She knew where Oliver was. He’d stop them both. “—our young are independent, yes, but never _alone_. No fawn goes anywhere in less than a herd of three!”

She waited for them to pass, and then ran from the settlement without looking back. She was distantly hungry, overwarm, and dangerously close to falling back into her fevered mind.

That only meant she had to find them before she fell.

The sun rose ahead, sharp behind a thin cover of clouds. The light was weak but determined, and her paws were wet in the melting slush. That was good. The wet world around her was good. Water carried scent easier through the air. It hastened rot. The sun would release what the snow had kept hidden. She kept her eyes, not on the horizon ahead, but on the sky above. What she wanted wouldn’t be found on the ground.

Her exhaustion made the trek seem endless until she was focusing on one paw in front of the other and telling herself that the pooling, painful heat was muscle strain and nothing nastier just to keep herself going. The mud sucked at her feet. Flies buzzed around her damp fur. She fell, twice, into hidden pools of ice cold meltwater and muck.

But then she saw it. Dots in the blue sky above. Wheeling hungrily.

Scavengers.

She walked doggedly towards them and the meal they’d been denied.

She found it. And she found them. The pup and the fawn splashing happily in puddles between fronds of frost-bitten grass, both seemingly unconcerned about the predators above or the scattered bones kicked about by their juvenile feet.

Emily stopped and stared. The carcass was torn apart by uncaring jaws, but strings of fur and rotten flesh still clung to cracked bones.

She looked at the tree in the distance. Was it the same crooked tree? She couldn’t tell.

She feared it was.

Oliver had seen her, slinking to the ground with his tail tucked between his legs and his ears flat. _Mama,_ he whined, cringing into a puddle until his muzzle was half hidden by the brackish water. _Was huntin’. Gonna find Daddy…_

Emily looked back at him, shaking away the thin horror of those wolfish bones. There was a rhythmic thumping in the air, somewhere. Distant from them. Helicopter rotors, she recognised. The Med-Evac they’d stalled the day before.

Howls began. Her absence had been noted.

_Is Daddy here?_ she asked carefully, deliberately not looking at the body.

_Was,_ said Oliver pertly, his little nose twitching. _Not now._ He turned in place, eyes intent. _I can find him but. I promise._

_Your father was always the best at tracking…_ Emily said hesitantly. Pain throbbed in her paws, her chest. Nausea pushed up her throat. She was going to be ill. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t puzzle through…

_Even as a pup,_ said a voice. Emily whirled. Ethan padded up. Neither Oliver nor Celeste jumped at his approach, and Emily groaned when she realized just how out of it she was. He’d been here all along. Neither child had been unsupervised in the boggy prairie. _I never could hide from him—he had a nose like a bloodhound. Wonder if that’s genetic?_

Emily didn’t dare to hope. Another howl—Aaron. Calling her. Worry and fear shot through his cry.

_Oliver,_ she said. Her son looked at her. _Oliver, find Daddy. Quick. Quick!_

_Okay!_ Oliver said, dancing about happily, and bounded off. _Come on, Mama! Gonna snuff._

They followed. Barely daring to hope, they followed. Followed him down, down, down a narrow gash in the ground and up once more. No discernible track to guide them, just thin ledges and toeholds that no wolf could cling to. They wound along until Emily wasn’t sure if they were going up or down anymore, or simply just falling into the end of the earth.

They came out upon a valley. It swept down and away, running thick with rivers of water and pooling into a glossy lake against the sky. But Oliver didn’t follow the water. He turned back and crossed the ledge, as sure as any goat, his eyes locked on a grassy cliff above. It yawned where water had sheared it in two, rocky and tufty and with barely discernible cracks where roots from the trees above twisted out.

There was no way a wolf was up there. Simply no way.

_Daddy,_ said Oliver proudly, his tufty tail wagging and flicking mud onto Emily’s nose. She padded closer, Ethan close behind. Celeste followed, picking delicately across fallen clods of dirt.

A crack came into view. High and sharp and hidden. A bloody smear across one side in the shape of a palm.

A wolf couldn’t get up there. A human could.

Emily shuddered.

_Wait here,_ Ethan ordered her, striding forward. _I’ll go._

_No._ Emily was cold enough that Ethan faltered, and already moving. Her head thumped and the world thumped with it, but she was already rearing to grab for the crack with paws that were suddenly shapeless.

Everything twisted. She wavered. Twisted more.

Fingers caught the ledge, the edge of the crack, and it crumbled against her dirt-encrusted nails. A thin hand scrabbled for a hold. She slipped on feet that didn’t know how to be feet anymore, her legs long and ungainly, her body confused.

Before she passed out, she gathered the last of her strength and _clung_.

“I’ve got you,” said Ethan, and a wide hand landed on her spine and pushed her up. “Go, Em.”

Human and bare and shockingly alive, she tumbled forward and down and into the earth. Through the hole she easily slipped, dangerously skinny. Forward and down and down, scraping on every sharp edge, until she landed on a surface that gave way under her.

Cold. It was cold. She gasped with a human mouth and a clumsy tongue, her fingers fumbling for a purchase in case she fell deeper. Weak light trickled in above, clouded by a cascade of dirt and small rocks that pattered down atop them. Under her hands and her legs and her ass, the ground was grainy and soft and—

Moaned, shifting slightly. She looked down. Found her useless hands.

Traced them along a curled-up shape that twitched and thumped dully along with her bounding pulse.

She made a noise that was supposed to be his name but was a sob instead, falling forward and over the shape beneath her. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know how anymore. Her eyes watered painfully, the hollow they were crushed into twisting and tightening around her. She made another noise and it was closer to a wail. It was pain. Pain and shock and grief and a frightening hope, and she heard Oliver and Ethan crying out in reply.

“Emily,” rasped the shape beneath her. His eyes opened, catching the thin light despite the dirt coating his face. “Em…”

She found her voice. Ethan’s head appeared above, cutting off the light.

“He’s alive,” she sobbed, her voice _fucked_. “Alive, alive, alive, alive—”

And then she couldn’t speak anymore, just curling around him with her fingers cupping his face, drawing his filthy mouth up against hers. She kissed him. Once and twice and maybe really only once because she couldn’t remember taking a break for breathing.

She kissed him for the first time with his heart going _tick tick_ still against her side. She kissed him until Oliver slipped down into the hollow with them, squeaking with delight, and then she held her broken family close and waited for rescue.

There was howling outside, but this time she welcomed it.

 

* * *

 

Emily drifted awake to the wall crumbling down and voices all around them. She stared as sunlight seemed to burst through the dirt, exploding into a cloud of dust. Shadowed figures loomed from the outside, reaching in. Reaching for them. Oliver cried out with fear and she turned and huddled around him protectively.

A blur of sluggish movement and Spence was up, wrapping his arms around them both and baring startlingly white human teeth at in a wolfish snarl, his mouth and eyes wild in a mask of mud and blood. Emily curled into that protective grip, her cheek against his rattling chest, ear brushing the ragged tear where the hoof had almost crushed him.

The shadow solidified. Spencer’s grip weakened. “Hotch,” he husked, swaying down and letting his head droop onto Emily’s. “You came for her.”

Aaron’s voice was gentle, but Emily still heard him, even over the thump of helicopter rotors settling down and the shouts of people moving around them. “I came for both of you,” he said, and held out his hand.

Emily didn’t know who took it. One of them did. When she was conscious of moving again, she was being led slowly towards one of two waiting helicopters, through a throng of people. She looked at who held her.

“Dave,” she managed, leaning against him.

“I’ve got you,” he reassured her, stooping just in time to scoop her legs up before they sagged out from under her. A scratchy orange blanket wrapped around her naked body, he picked her up easily. She didn’t even have the energy to complain, simply snuffing warily and peering around to see where her pup was.

Right behind her, two steps. Carried by Elizabeth. Oliver’s eyes weren’t on her though, and he was wailing. She was human and deaf to him, but she knew the wide-eyed look on his face. He desperately wanted one of them. And he wasn’t looking to her.

She followed that gaze. Medics with armbands of red and white worked busily around a stretcher being carried to the adjacent helicopter to theirs. She could see the same orange of the blanket around her and a glimpse of dirty-brown hair.

Spencer.

They were taking him away.

No.

“No,” she whined, and wiggled. Dave held her tightly. “Dave, I just got him back. No, no, no… no…”

Oliver saw her fighting and screamed louder, his little paws kicking as he howled despairingly. The din of the rotors and the shouting voices and the whir of machinery drowned out his voice. He howled again and she jerked hard enough that Dave had to kneel to readjust her.

“Em, whoa,” he said, eyes wide. “You can’t go with him. He’s critically injured—they need space to work on him to keep him stable. Aaron will stay with you.”

“No!” she gasped, fear rushing her. She’d let him out of her sight and thought him dead. And even though she’d kissed him, held him, felt his heart still ticking—she needed to keep looking at him. Keep him near her.

Elizabeth suddenly yelled in shock, and there was a shriek that sent heads snapping around.

A human shriek.

Human and furious, Oliver threw himself out of his grandma’s arms, hitting the ground and trying to run. Unused to his human legs, he fell, screamed, fell again. Wailed, “Daaaaa!” and burst into manic tears. A shock of brown hair that curled and waved around his scarred face almost hid his desperate eyes. Almost.

Emily reached, shuffling forward and almost losing the blanket to catch her son, hefting him into her arms by one thin elbow. He pressed against her, damp and barely breathing through his screams, his mouth a round O of absolute dismay.

There were shouts. Emily turned, hugging Oliver tight with her heart hammering hard, seeing Spencer up and fighting. His eyes were on his son, blank and unheeding and barely conscious, but fighting nonetheless. He was human but his expression was wolfish, pushing through every pain that pressed him down in order to get to his child.

She stood and staggered forward, Oliver in her arms.

“Da,” Oliver mumbled into her chest.

She had to reach Spencer. He had to see his son. Had to touch him.

Had to.

But she fell. Despite the hands that grabbed for her, Dave trying to steady her, she fell. She was just too weak. All this way, almost safe, and she couldn’t get Oliver those last few steps to his father’s arms.

She tried again, but a hand stopped her. She flinched away, felt the hand cup softly around her cheek and draw her face up when she hadn’t even realized she’d averted her eyes.

Aaron.

Aaron with his gentle eyes and his heartbroken smile. Looking older and wearier than she’d ever seen him. She couldn’t bear that look.

“You’ve come far enough,” he said, “let me help.”

And he took Oliver from her arms. Oliver gasped, looking to her for a sign of how to react. For a moment, the wolf inside her reared, furiously possessive.

But then it stopped. Settled. And she let her arms fall.

She let Aaron carry her son those last few feet, and watched as the man she’d loved placed her son in the waiting embrace of the man she’d almost lost. Spencer barely seemed to notice who’d carried Oliver to him, just that Oliver was there, hugging his son as though he couldn’t ever bear to let go. And he didn’t. He didn’t let go, not until the medics used his distraction to sedate him and his hands slipped lifelessly down onto the stretcher.

Aaron brought the quiet Oliver back to her. As soon as she had him, he shifted back into a puppy, silent and teary.

“Your turn,” Aaron said, letting her stand on her own before offering her his arm. “Not long now.”

“Thank you,” she managed, closing her eyes and _meaning_ it. “Thank you.”

He led her to the helicopter that would take her from this nightmare, and they left the winter prairies behind. The last thing Emily thought, as she lay down on the bed they’d forced her into, seeing a final snippet of grass and sky from the window, was that she’d never see it again.

And it was the last place she’d ever seen Riley.

_Where are you?_ she thought, and then the anaesthesia kicked in and she thought of nothing at all.


	35. Succouring Stalled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She woke just once in the air. There was a mask on her face. She tried to shift her arm to touch it and winced as the only response was a stinging pull from where IVs threaded into her hand. Her body a mass of wires and tubes and she felt panic spike as her memories reared up to cloud her mind and common sense. She stalled the panic by letting her head loll to the side and staring through a bright gleam of sun at those seated to the back of the medical transport. Her mom, asleep with her head on her arm. Aaron, his eyes lowered. Oliver, in Aaron’s lap. Paws dangling playfully over the edge as he gnawed on the buttons of Aaron’s jacket. Emily stared, watching Aaron’s fingers trace the prominent bumps of Oliver’s spine, slowly. His face was… painful to look at.

She shivered, hearing the monitor measuring her heartrate beep with the shift in her pulse. Because the look on Aaron’s face wasn’t curiosity or guilt or regret.

It was confusion. And it was love.

_Pack is pack,_ Emily wanted to say, but couldn’t through the mask and the grogginess. _You’ve loved him since he was born, you just never knew._

As though he’d heard her, Aaron’s head snapped up. Dark eyes examined her.

Her heartrate skipped again.

She found her hand and reached out to him, wishing she could say with the touch what she couldn’t with her broken voice. She was horrified to see how thin and gnarled her own hand looked, the nails wrecked, the skin cut and scarred. Shifting around in the seat, he wordlessly stretched out a hand in response. Oliver watched.

Their hands touched and held. She slept once more as they flew through the sky over the country that had tried, and almost succeeded, to destroy her.

 

* * *

 

She didn’t wake again for what felt like forever. Apparently, she _was_ conscious, at certain points. She certainly wasn’t cognizant of being conscious for the frantic weeks that followed the delirious fall into the deep hole that her mate had hidden himself away in.

She slept through their arrival in Sanctuary. She would never see the extraordinary city of the shifters.

She slept through Spencer clinging to life with a tenacity that wouldn’t have surprised her at all if she’d known. It took three surgeries by a team of doctors flown out from DC to bring him back from the brink of death. They were, apparently, optimistic of his recovery. His _physical_ recovery. They thought that maybe they’d even be able to repair the detached retina on his right side, giving him back his full range of sight.

She slept through the negotiations and the horror that followed their condition being leaked to the public, both in Efisga and at home in the States. Elizabeth headed them. Aaron refused to leave her side for the political machinations, and that wouldn’t have surprised Emily at all either if she’d known—that Aaron had put aside the greater good for the woman he’d loved, or that her mother had put aside her daughter and grandson for her job.

She slept through Ethan discovering that Quinn was alive and safe. It wouldn’t have pleased her to see him cry, or to experience the mixed twist of emotions that seeing Arthur Sinclair greeting the youngest Reid brother as son would have brought.

She slept through being returned to DC.

And when she woke, it was winter and JJ was sitting by her bed. There was snow brushing the windows, Oliver was a puppy in an expensive looking parka playing with blocks on the floor, and the muted TV overhead was playing a silent advertisement for Christmas sales. Pages rustled as JJ flicked through the book she was reading. Emily stared at her, unable to parse this stranger by her bedside. A person who looked like someone that Emily had once known but had become sure she’d never see again.

_Bang_ and Oliver’s blocks tumbled down as he accidentally knocked a trolley.

“Careful, sweetie,” JJ said with a glance at the pup. Oliver’s tail wagged warily. “You’ll wake your— _oh_.” She’d seen Emily. “Em? Are you… are you awake this time?”

Emily blinked and found that the strange scene in front of her was tearing and blurring. There was a tube in her nose and her arms were sluggish. Everything felt heavy and wrong.

But she found her voice, lost so long ago.

“JJ,” she managed, and then she began to cry. Like she couldn’t with Dave or Aaron or Spencer. Confused and scared and overwhelmed, suddenly she was being held in an embrace that smelled like home. “Spencer?” she asked. She had to know. Sick with the knowledge that he might have died while she was sleeping, that he might have—

“Doing so well, Em, so well,” JJ said, using her hand to wipe tears from Emily’s face. “He’s been just as sleepy as you are. God, you should have… you…” Now she was blinking frantically, her mouth twisting in horror. “Oh my god, Emily… we thought you were…” She looked to Oliver, biting her lip. “…you just all looked so awful. You’d been through so much… but he’s doing so well.” She pointed her chin, mouth wobbling, and Emily followed her line of sight to an empty bed with the covers slightly ruffled. “He’s gone for physical therapy. He won’t be long though.”

Emily closed her eyes, dizzy with relief. And just like that, she remembered laying in a void of nothing listening to faded voices, indistinct touches, Spencer’s voice from miles away.

And then she thumped back to earth with a gasp and a sharp uptick in the monitor near her ear.

“Riley,” she breathed, and JJ looked away. “My daughter. Someone has to have saved my daughter, please, someone…”

Fingers wrapped around hers before she could reach up and tug the tubes from her nose, tear the IV from her arm. The wolf under her skin writhed with anger, determined to burst out and tear across the world to find her lost pup. Despite her exhaustion, she was clearer-minded than she’d been for months and knew she had to move while she could. Get back on the road. Start hunting. The room was suddenly too small, and she looked to the door and found it closed.

The panic was instant.

JJ cried out and an alarm shrilled as Emily shifted with a gasp, lurching for the door and dragging all the machinery down with her.

_Mama!_ cried Oliver in fear, leaping out of the way of the stand attached to Emily’s IV. Blocks clattered everywhere, JJ was on her feet, and the door was _closed_.

_Let me out!_ Emily screamed, and the door opened. She whirled towards it.

She stopped.

He leaned heavily on a plain steel hospital-issued cane that aged him terribly, his hair cut short and only emphasising how dangerously skinny he still was. Cheekbones that slashed down his face creating hollow shadows where there should be flesh and a mouth that was starkly defined against pale skin; his sunken eye—the other thickly covered by bandages—that were only an iota healthier than they had been studied her with blank worry. He was a skeletal man on the brink of recovery and he wore the scars of their journey openly.

As did she. She shifted back with a choked whine, finding herself kneeling naked on the tiles with blood dripping slowly from freshly opened surgical wounds. She’d torn a tube from her chest where it was draining a wound and the tear on her hand was stinging painfully.

But the door was open and he was _here_.

Nurses clustered behind him as he stepped forward once, twice, and the cane fell to the floor as he fell with it, wrapping his arms tight around her and drawing her close.

“The door is open now,” he whispered into her hair, his hands almost hurting with how tight they gripped her. She was glad for the pain. “It will always be open, Emily.”

“Spence,” Emily mewled, like she wasn’t a woman who didn’t need saving, like she was a fucking _puppy_. “Riley. We need… Riley…”

How close they were was proving one thing. She’d been wrong. He _was_ healthier. The heart that beat in his chest wasn’t shallow, not anymore. It beat powerfully and she closed her eyes and felt like she was drowning in it, wrapping herself with the beloved tempo.

“We’ll get her,” he promised, and she believed him, lifting her head and seeing people moving into the room behind him with careful steps. One hovered back, watching. He smiled when she met his gaze, exhaustion and worry warring with relief. Aaron. Aaron was here. Spencer was still talking: “But we need to be strong. We can’t be sick or weak, Em—sick wolves can’t hunt.”

He was right. They needed to be strong for their pups. That hadn’t changed. She nodded and pressed closer, revelling in the feel of her human body responding to her demands.

They’d heal and then they’d go back. She could see it in his eyes.

They weren’t done yet.

 

* * *

 

Strangely, after fighting so hard to get home to them, Emily found that she had very little to say to the people around her. How could she use mere _words_ to convey the magnitude of what she’d been through to JJ? How could Aaron, prim and proper Aaron, possibly understand why she felt uneasy on the high hospital bed or why both her and Spencer insisted upon having the windows and doors open at all times, despite the frigid winter air? How could Dave know why they refused to sleep at the same time, ensuring that at least one of them was always on guard over Oliver?

How could _any of them_ understand that they might not be in Efisga anymore, but Efisga was absolutely still in them?

They were fed food that tasted processed and strange and medicated heavily to stop the nightmares and the freak-outs. They were all treated for malnutrition and parasites. None of them slept easily, all unable to adjust to the noise of the city and hospital around them.

They weren’t released, but they knew the world outside was aware of them. So they closed ranks. Emily and Spencer around their pup, and they were human but only just. As the weeks ground on and they put on weight and began to move around on their own, no one celebrated their recovery. Because they were healthier, but they were silent.

Emily didn’t mean to be. Not at first. She hugged JJ and hugged Henry and told them how happy she was to see them and how she’d never given up on them. Then she did the same to Dave. Then she did the same to her mother.

Then she did the same to Aaron and to Jack, with the same blank smile.

And again, for friends she hadn’t spoken to in years. And again, for Morgan. And Blake. And Gideon. And she found that she was spending more and more time reassuring people that she’d never given up on them, that she was desperately trying to cling to a facsimile of who she’d used to be.

Her fears had been accurate. She didn’t belong with them anymore. She retreated to where Spencer was curled on the hospital room couch with Oliver in his lap, and huddled by his side. They refused any more visitors.

“Pack is pack,” she mumbled into Spencer’s shoulder, feeling him shivering with barely repressed anxiousness. A cart clattered outside and they both jolted, turning to stare warily at the door.

He nodded jerkily. “I lived for them,” he said suddenly, looking at her with his one uncovered eye wide. “The pups. I lived for them. And for you. It hurt. I had to kill a wolf who attacked me and then I hid, so I’d survive. And I wanted to die. But I didn’t…”

“Spence…” she said, wishing he’d stop and knowing he couldn’t. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I understand…” She understood alright. They were aliens in an alien world. She hated Efisga, but she craved the quiet and the simplicity and the peace.

His hand snapped up and caught hers, clinging painfully with his short nails digging into her skin. “No,” he urged her, “you need to listen, Emily. I lived for you and for them and I did that. _I_ did that, no one else. I was strong then, but…” And he shuddered, his eyes darting to the door again and then up to the muted TV set where _What Next? FBI Agents Returned, but what of the other victims?_ was scrolling across the bottom news ticker. “But I can’t do this. This… what we’re doing. Pretending. Sitting still. Doing nothing while Riley is with _them_.”

Silence fell between them, except not as silent as it could have been. Oliver kicked in his sleep, whining. Whiskers twitching. He hadn’t shifted again since the Med-Evac; neither Emily nor Spencer were allowed to shift to be with him properly, and they weren’t allowing anyone to take him from them. Not now, not ever. He stayed between them. Safe. Guarded.

Emily looked back at the TV. _Tune back at 6 to hear about the whole 4,000-mile journey to come home undertaken by the captured wolves. The question remains: will there be justice for their loss?_

“I wish we’d never left the mountains,” she said honestly.

She hadn’t spoken to Aaron yet, not properly, and she didn’t think she would. Spencer hadn’t reached out to his family, any of them. She knew he wouldn’t. They’d already grieved him once. It hung between them, what they weren’t saying. Pack is pack, and their hands were entwined. She didn’t repeat that she loved him. He didn’t ask her to.

But they knew they were just biding time until they could go back.

 

* * *

 

“They’ll allow you to be released if you’re under someone’s care,” Aaron said carefully, his voice overloud in the silent room. Spencer watched with shadowed eyes from the window, Oliver in his arms. His clothes— _his_ clothes, not the hospital’s—hung from a still too-thin frame. He kept tugging at the sweater awkwardly, trying to adjust to the feeling. Emily picked at a loose thread on her sweatpants and avoided eye-contact. “I’ve offered to open my home to you all, if you’re…”

Now Emily looked at him. They’d been back almost a month. She hadn’t said anything to him beyond “hello” and “can you pass the jello?”

What was he expecting?

Maybe he saw the suspicion in her eyes. “Not as a partner, Emily,” Aaron said softly, and Emily saw Spencer’s head snap around from his position by the window. “As pack. All of you, as pack. It’s my duty to take care of you. You’re… not healing here.”

“We’re not your pack,” Spencer murmured, his voice rough. Still half-choked from the barely healed damage done to his lungs, but despite this, he was still looking a damn sight better than she was. The deep blood infections in her wounds had taken surgery after surgery to heal, and she knew she was a mass of scarring and neuroses. Psychologically, she was a hot mess. “You left the only pack you’d ever led back in Efisga.”

“They chose to stay,” Aaron retorted sharply. “I went to retrieve you two—my team—as my priority. Until I’m sure that you’re in a state where it’s safe to leave you and return to help regain those who remain, here I plan on staying.” They were silent. Aaron continued, sounding weary: “We didn’t just spend the years you were gone waiting for you to come back. We fought for you. We fought to change the laws, to somehow reach you legally.”

“Good job,” Emily snapped bitterly. He’d fought _so_ hard, in court rooms and against juries, while she’d been fighting to fucking _survive_ : “It must have been so terrible.”

“I didn’t succeed.” His shoulders slumped. She flinched. Pushing him away was… hurtful. To him and her.

She missed him.

“You crossed the border illegally?” Spencer asked, his voice turning curious for the first time since they’d returned. “How did you regain your citizenship?”

“They’re returning them all to those who were taken involuntarily,” Aaron replied. “Ambassador Prentiss has picked up where I left off—that’s why I’m here. Emily, look at me.” She did so, reluctantly. His dark eyes were intent, despite his careful distance. “I’m not here because I’ve given up on finding your daughter or the others who were taken, not even a little. We’ve been given permission to lead a raid into Efisga, sanctioned by both the US Government and Efisgan officials.”

Her heart slammed twice. A raid.

_Riley._

“When?” Spencer, his voice sharp and almost shaking with excitement.

“As soon as the winter blizzards stop and allow us to take air transports deep into the North.” His eyes were still on her. Still studying her, judging. Profiling. She’d forgotten how discerning his gaze could be. “I plan to be first on the ground. Emily, if you want to be by my side, you need to be healed. You need to be recertified for the field. That means psychologically as well. I’m not saying this to push you—I’m saying it to stop this withdrawal you’re both persisting in. No one here has given up on you. Don’t give up on us.”

Spencer moved up until his shoulder was brushing Emily’s. Oliver whined and wiggled in his grip, demanding to be let down. “Pack is pack,” he whispered, barely loud enough for Emily to hear him.

“Pack is pack,” repeated Aaron, lowering his head. A sign of affection and of supplication. A wolf bowing his head to one whom he would follow, if that wolf was to lead. She’d never, ever seen Aaron lower his head to anyone.

Spencer stared.

“Okay,” said Emily quietly. “We’ll come.”

 

* * *

 

They didn’t end up staying with Aaron. They tried.

God, it hurt Emily to see them trying. But Spencer was still more wolf than man and, while Aaron seemed determined to welcome them _all_ home, she knew Spencer was having trouble separating the logical, rational side of his brain from the wolf-y side that still snarled at the sight of a strange male near his sort-of-mate and pup.

Jack had cried and clutched her like he couldn’t ever bear to let go. “Please stay,” he’d begged, and Emily had held him and looked up to find Oliver staring at them like his heart was breaking, and Spencer as a wolf pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the living room with his hackles raised, still limping. Aaron stood in the doorway, human, but his scent was thick with stress and his eyes tracked Spencer’s every movement. The whole house stunk of strained maleness, and every time Spencer accidentally passed between Jack and Aaron, Aaron twitched and his mouth curled.

They’d tried.

“I’ll come back,” she promised Jack, and buried her face in his hair to hide her tears. “Jack, I promise.”

“You’ll bring Olly?” Jack asked. He swiped a sleeve across his nose, red-eyed and so much bigger than she’d known him last. So many years lost. And utterly determined, just like his dad, to keep _all_ his family together. “Please? I can teach him to play. He’ll like me soon, I bet. He just needs to get used to me.”

Oliver, Emily thought, probably would. Maybe. He’d certainly liked Celeste well enough.

She wondered if Riley would like Jack, when they brought her home.

She wondered if Jack was lonely yet.

“I’ll drive you to Dave’s,” Aaron conceded, his shoulders doing that horrible slump again, and no one argued. Dave, unlike Aaron, wasn’t a threat. Spencer hid his guilt well, but Emily knew he was hurting about his inability to be calm around Aaron. And she didn’t know how to tell him it was okay, that she was just as stressed about it. That she didn’t know where she stood with the man anymore and that she didn’t even really _know_ the man anymore. Not this softer Aaron who walked around in sweatpants and a soft polo and smiled cautiously at her like he was worried she’d bolt. Not the Aaron who’d led wolves into Efisga to find them or who’d run an illegal pack or who’d spent two years trying to change society to save her.

And she was a little worried that he’d sacrificed so much, that she couldn’t _ever_ repay him. And that she was letting him down by…

Well.

In the dark of the car as they drove in silence, she let go of Spencer’s hand and guiltily withdrew her arm. And then winced as Spencer looked away, his face flushing.

That night, in Dave’s bed with Oliver curled up beside her, she rubbed her aching legs from the physiotherapy exercises she was forcing herself to complete—the only way she’d earn a ride on that raid was by being _better_ than she’d ever been, despite her low stamina and fractured nerves—and she examined the empty side next to her. Spencer slept on the couch downstairs. Dave in the guest bedroom. The night ticked on. She wondered what Aaron was doing. She was doing a lot of wondering lately, lost in a sea of not really knowing anything anymore. There were no rabbits to catch here, no predators to evade. Everything she’d valued over the past three years, gone.

After a long beat, she slipped out of the bed and let her t-shirt slip to the floor, shifting to wolf in the frigid air and padding downstairs to walk out under the moonlight. Oliver slept on. He was safe in Dave’s house, she was absolutely sure, even with the window wide open to stop her from panicking about being enclosed. Safe with Dave _and_ Spencer there. She kept telling herself this as she nudged the back door open with her nose, walking out into a frozen night.

Not snowing, but icy. The lawn was frosted white and the sky was heavily clouded. She walked out into the centre of the lawn, under a couple of trees, and hunkered down. If she narrowed her eyes and ignored her ears and nose, she could almost pretend she was ho—

She froze at what she’d almost thought.

_Wanna talk?_

She turned to watch Dave walk towards her, his grey fur seemingly white-tipped in the cold night. He bumped her with his nose and his hip before taking a seat next to her on the lawn, muzzle tipped upwards.

_No,_ she said honestly. _I don’t really know how anymore._

That earned her a side-eye. _How about I talk then?_ he asked. She nodded. _Alright. We could talk about how balls-freezingly cold it is out here. We could talk about the fact that Spencer hasn’t even been here for twenty-four hours and he’s already had two nightmares. We could talk about how you’re not sleeping and you’re not healing and you’re hiding both of those things because you think we’ll stop you from going to get Riley when winter breaks._

_I’m fine,_ she snapped, instantly angry. Damn him. Damn him!

He huffed. _Or we could talk about how you’re acting like Aaron is about to throw you over his shoulder and carry you off to some castle somewhere like a prize mule._

There wasn’t even anything she could say to that.

_I’m not…_ she tried, and stopped. She’d never been able to lie to him. _I just don’t…_

_Trust anyone,_ Dave finished for her. _You didn’t before you were captured, and I seriously doubt those fuckers helped with that. You don’t trust us with your little mite in there—incidentally, a problem if you think you’re going back to get your daughter. Because either you’re working under the belief that Spencer—a wolf who, from what I can tell, is seriously not coping with the idea that his injuries led to her recapture—is going to stay behind with Oliver, or that Aaron is going to let you take a pup on a raid._

Emily didn’t say a word. Just lowered her head and blew warm air from her nose.

_I’ve seen the room,_ Dave said suddenly, watching her carefully as she shuddered and opened her mouth as though to gag, an instant reflex.

_Video footage,_ she whispered, because they hadn’t seen Quinn or Ethan since their return but she knew that Quinn had supplied the footage.

_Yeah. And… well, we all dream loudly._

Her head snapped up to stare at him. _Spencer?_ she asked, uneasy. She hadn’t been privy to those dreams, a sign that he was shutting her out again. Or still. Maybe his recent clinginess to her was a factor of his guilt, not any lingering feelings between them. Which meant he might… leave. And she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to be gone from her life. Leaving her alone. A one-wolf pack.

_Breathe,_ Dave coaxed her. _You’re panicking. Yes. Distantly. He only sometimes allows me access to his thoughts and only because, I believe, of my closeness to you. And I’m non-threatening. Shows what the little shit knows. I could kick his tawny ass. But not just him. Aaron dreams of it too. Of finding you within it. Of being unable to save you. Of watching you and Spencer in that room, dying, and never being able to reach either of you._

_Me **and** Spencer? _she asked, stunned. Why Spencer?

_He didn’t search so hard for you because you were almost his mate, Emily. **We** searched for you because you’re our pack and we love you. And Spencer too—although, I admit, it wasn’t until he was gone that we realized how coldly we’d treated him. And I know every one of us is waiting for a chance to atone for that, if only you’d stop pushing us away. We want to be your pack. We want to be Spencer’s pack. We want to be Oliver and Riley’s pack—this **is** your home, you know. No matter how appealing your hole in the wall back in Efisga may seem._

_Less complicated for sure,_ she said weakly. _Efisga was never this contradictory._

_People are contradictory. It’s what we do best, sweetie. Em? If you learned anything over the past years, it’s that us wolves are shit at being alone. Stop isolating yourself in expectation of us leaving you. It’s not gonna happen. We got you back and we ain’t going anywhere._

She nodded, looking back to the house where Spencer and her pup slept. _What is he to me, Dave?_ she asked, knowing there was no fucking way he could answer that. No one could. Maybe not even Spencer.

Dave shrugged. _He’s Reid,_ he said finally, nudging her towards the back door. _He’s the guy who walked four thousand miles with you because he trusted you completely. And he’s the father of your pups and a member of our pack—does anything else really matter right now? Who says you have to figure out everything immediately upon setting foot in DC? You be you, Em, not who you think others want you to be._

_My own wolf,_ she murmured, and he laughed and slipped through the door. She bid him goodnight, lingering by the stairs with the scent of snow on her nose and with damp paws.

“Em?” Spence leaned out the living room, his eyes sleepy-shut and his cheek creased from where he’d been lying on his arm. “You okay?”

She shifted, suddenly human and naked in front of him. He didn’t even flinch. Apparently if she’d learned not to be alone, he’d learned not to be shy. How they’d changed. “I’m fine,” she said, and it was only partially a lie. Three weeks until winter’s end. Three weeks until Riley. “I just…”

He watched her, wordless.

“Come to bed with me?” she asked. She wasn’t begging. She wasn’t propositioning. “You don’t sleep well alone anymore. And…” She paused. Her mind raced. Three weeks. Three weeks wasn’t long enough for her to heal to the level they wanted her at, not even close. She could pretend. She absolutely could.

He could pretend better.

“Em?”

He’d fought for them. He’d died for them. He’d carried them. But, she’d done just as much as he had. And it was okay to step aside.

“I trust you,” she said, and realized it was the truest thing she’d said since coming back to DC. “And you need to sleep if you’re going to go get our daughter.”

He frowned, confused, and then his expression cleared. He stared at her like he’d never seen her before, as though she’d done something absolutely incredible. “You’d trust me that much?” he murmured. “Even when I let you down? I fell, Emily. You needed me. You begged… and I fell.”

She was already shaking her head as she stepped forward and took his hand, cold and bony but stronger than it had been. “No,” she told him honestly. “You’ve never let me down. You’ve always been strong, and you’ll bring her home to us.”

“Us?” he asked cautiously, his grip tightening. “Em…”

“Pack is pack,” she reiterated one final time, forcing a smile. It felt strange and human on her face. “That’s all I want, Spence. It’s all I can handle right now. Just… my pack around me. All of my pack. And the rest will fall into place.”

He smiled and, unlike hers, his was real. Folding himself against her, his lips found hers. But it wasn’t a romantic kiss. It wasn’t burning or passionate or violent with want. It was soft and gentle and lasting, much like he was.

“Of all my regrets,” he whispered into her mouth, and she tasted the shape of them and savoured that feeling, “you’ve never been one of them. I’ll never regret you, and I’ll never regret our children. No matter what happens.”

“No matter what happens,” she vowed, and led him upstairs to their son.


	36. Riley Revolt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Aaron**

It felt like he was strapping himself into the skin of the man he’d used to be. Shirt. Suit jacket. Tie. Weapon, holstered.  In the hidden pocket inside his jacket: the folding mirror to look around corners, a switchblade, a pocket flashlight. All trivial things that had saved his life before and might again soon.

He kissed his son goodbye—so soon since saying goodbye to him the first time—and got into his car. Alone, he drove to the airfield and into a hive of activity. FBI windbreakers everywhere. Three large SWAT helicopter transports stood waiting, buzzing with airfield personnel running last minute checks on them. There were SWAT logos dotted among the yellow FBI. It was barely dawn, the sun a soft glow on the grey spring sky.

Aaron stood back and watched for a moment until he saw a profile he knew, and then he stepped once more into the shoes of Hotch and walked into the chaos.

Gideon turned to face him, his expression as eagle-eyed and sharp as ever. Rossi, Blake, and Morgan stood to the side, all of their faces tight with tension and ready to board. Morgan and Rossi had been recertified and passed field clearance a month ago. Hotch, two weeks before when both Strauss and media pressure had combined to force the issue.

They’d been wrong. His acts hadn’t caused war. Instead, there was a social uprising against the therian isolation that had allowed this to happen in the first place. There were protests, bills, scathing newspaper articles. Two of the men accompanying them today wore body-cams—and there was every chance that the footage obtained would be used to further relations between Efisga and the United States to ensure that not only was justice obtained for those who’d been hurt, but also that nothing like this was ever able to happen again.

_Born American, Still American,_ shouted the protestors. _Bring them home._

“There is,” Gideon began calmly, seemingly unbothered by the _thwop thwop_ of the rotors beginning to turn on the transports behind them, “a new bill being put forward. Enabling free crossing of all therians over the Efisga border, as part of an understanding that any therian born here belongs equally to both countries.”

“Oh?” said Hotch quietly, well-aware of the law. And who was heading it, with Elizabeth Prentiss’s help.

Quinn had wanted to call it Felicity’s Law. Emily had gone terribly, terribly silent when the woman had asked permission. Aaron had left the room to avoid seeing Spencer comfort her. Yet another reminder that there was now history between them that was stronger than anything she and Aaron had ever forged.

He was angry, of course. He was angry that this had happened to them. He was deeply jealous of the way she’d turn to Spencer and not him for comfort, as though the years of companionship _before_ they’d been a pair meant nothing. He was hurt by her shunning of him, despite being cruelly aware he probably deserved it. And he was heartbroken too, because she had been hurt and she was still hurting, and he didn’t know how to fix that for her.

But mostly, he was stunned. His feelings, as twisted and chaotic as they were, were nothing compared to the stunned awe of seeing Oliver in her or Spencer’s arms. Of seeing the blank, broken look in Spencer’s eyes vanish when his son bounded up to him, or seeing Emily’s mouth turn into an automatic smile as soon as the pup did something remarkable. He was stunned, but not surprised, by seeing how amazing a mother she was—he’d always known she would be. He was stunned by how much Jack immediately loved the new puppy.

He was stunned by how much _he_ immediately loved him. From the instant he’d picked up the screaming toddler and carried him back to his father in Efisga, he’d known. Oliver was Spencer and Emily’s son—that was unmistakable—but he was also absolutely Aaron’s pack. Pack raised their young together. Oliver was his, just as he was Dave’s and JJ’s and Jessica’s. Which meant that the ghostly memory of a black-furred girl, just as sharp and ferocious as Emily herself was, was a part of Aaron as well. An integral, important part of his person.

And that meant that he was going to tear this compound apart, not only because of what it had done to Emily and to Spencer, but also because it still held a member of his pack. No one hurt a member of his pack. If that meant that he carried the girl from there and once again placed a child that a small, selfish part of him whispered should have been _his_ into Spencer’s arms, then that was what he would do. Then he would bring them all home. Not just Riley and Spencer, but every other taken wolf, and he would spend the rest of his life atoning for that selfish part of himself, and also for the fault he knew lay with him for them being taken in the first place.

“Hotch.” Hotch snapped back to attention, turning his head to Dave and noting the raised eyebrow and half-smirk. Apparently, he’d been talking to him for a while with no response. “It’s time to board.”

So it was. Hotch nodded and turned silently to the helicopter he was taking. He wasn’t leading the raid—he was just boots on the ground—but he was leading the wolves of their unit. One of whom was standing there, his head low and his hand curled by his side as though he was unconsciously still leaning on the support of a hospital-issued steel cane. Hotch approached him, shouting over the noise of the helicopters as their hair whipped around their faces.

“Time to go,” he called. Spencer looked up at him, studying him with the now-familiar wolf behind his gaze. Something in Hotch rankled at that look. It wasn’t the look of the subservient. It was a look much more at home on Dave or Emily than it was on Spencer Reid.

Some part of him gloried in it. No pack would ever shove Spencer Reid around again. He was, finally, his own wolf. One day, Aaron would know him well enough to tell him that.

“You’re leading us in?” Spencer asked quietly, almost too low to be heard. But Hotch’s senses were on overdrive; he was vividly aware of not only Spencer’s words but also his racing heartbeat and his anxious scent. He could smell Emily on the man’s clothes and skin, Emily and Oliver. Coffee on his breath. He could hear the soft crunch of footsteps approaching and see the way Spencer’s eyes darted over Hotch’s left shoulder and widened slightly.

“No,” said Hotch, turning his body to make sure who was walking towards them was who he thought it would be. It was. “You two are, together. I don’t know how you work together, and I’ve never worked with him. But I trust you both. You know the layout. And you know where the children are kept—they’re our first priority.”

Ethan Reid stopped, a careful distance from them both, lowering his head for a heartbeat.

“You’ll be moving against people you’ve known and called your pack for years,” Spencer said, his eyes on Ethan. Nothing brotherly showed on his face—simply calm professionalism. The agent of old, ascertaining whether his team was fit for the task at hand. Profiling. “Can you do that?”

Ethan’s head snapped back up, his mouth in a firm line. “You’re not the only one with children to save,” he replied. “Everything else is irrelevant.”

Hotch nodded. Good enough for him. “Welcome to the team, Reid,” he said, and turned back to follow Spencer onto the chopper.

 

* * *

 

They rested for a night after the eighteen-hour flight at a base camp south of a long ridge of arctic mountains. This far north, it didn’t feel as though winter was over. The snow was thick, the air was icy, and every SWAT and FBI logo was quickly covered by layers of lined parkas and hoods.

Three hours before they were due to leave, the arctic sun scooting oddly around the horizon as though tethered invisibly to the earth by a short leash, Hotch realized Spencer wasn’t sitting by his brother. He wasn’t in the helicopter. He wasn’t pacing by the riverside or standing by the cooking fire. Hotch found him on a windblown slope, staring at the distant mountains with a strange look on his face. Wary. Distraught.

Wistful.

“They’re beautiful,” Hotch said quietly, because they were. Miles away, a herd of caribou moved across the icy tundra. White hares watched them from the slope where they fed from the brown grasses unearthed by the wind. “The mountains, I mean.”

“They are,” Spencer replied. His voice was soft. Hotch stood beside him and they watched the sun rise slowly. He didn’t know how to span the impassable distance between them. They were close enough that the fog from their breath was mixing together, but the years and Spencer’s trauma and Emily sat between them. Yet, somehow, Hotch knew; if he wanted to ever be a part of Emily’s life again, or her children’s lives, he needed to find a way to reach across.

And that way wasn’t through Emily. He couldn’t see Spencer just as a facet of his need to reconnect with the woman he loved still—that wasn’t fair on either of them. So, he did what he should have done eight years ago, when a wolf with fur like butterscotch had walked into his life and awkwardly shook his hand.

“Tell me about them,” he said, looking once more to those distant mountains.

Spencer looked at him, as though trying to spot a trap. He heaved a breath that would have burned with how cold it was. And he began, cautiously, with, “Emily—”

“No,” Hotch stopped him. “Not what _Emily_ thought of them, Spencer. You suffered too. This is your story as well.”

Spencer stared.

“I don’t know what to talk about,” he said finally, heavily. His shoulders slumped a little. “It was cold. It was dark. It was both of those things, unless I was home in the den I created with Emily. And then it was warm and small and contained and it felt as though my entire heart was beating just for that singular space.”

Hotch thought of the people they were going to be bringing home with them and the fight they had ahead of them to ensure that all those people could remain. And then he thought of those who would never be coming home.

It was risky. It could backfire. He knew Emily refused to speak of it, and Spencer had followed suit. Here, standing on this slope alone with the other man, as equals, he thought maybe it was time that one of them _did_ talk about it.

“When people ask me how many children I have, I say one,” he said. Spencer stiffened, his scent sharpening. “I never held Jack’s brothers. There were four, you know. Four apart from Jack. I had them buried with Haley, and none of them have names.”

Spencer was silent.

“I don’t grieve them as children; I grieve for the potential lives they could have been.” Hotch stepped closer. For the first time, Spencer didn’t step away, and their breathing was rough with shared pain. “I grieve for Jack, who is going to grow up alone. I grieve for Haley because I lost her. Perhaps if I was the mother, if I’d carried them, their loss would hurt more individually… but it doesn’t. And I think of myself as a father of one.”

“Emily filled out a form in the hospital,” Spencer whispered, almost as though he didn’t want to be heard, “and she listed herself as having two children. I did the same. Legally, we have two dependants.”

_I want to call it Felicity’s Law_ , Quinn had asked, and Aaron had only wondered for a moment who Felicity was before Spencer had made a noise like his heart had shattered irreparably. And he’d remembered—Emily hadn’t carried two.

“I have three children,” Spencer said roughly. He was staring at the mountains, but Hotch doubted that was what he was actually seeing. “I am a father of three. And those mountains were her home. I raised her there. I named her there. I was there when she opened her eyes for the first time in a den hidden in a ridge on the mountainside, looking out over a valley of ice. I was there when she walked for the first time, when she spoke for the first time, when she laughed for the first time. And then I took her from those mountains to die.” He turned now, away from the view and back to Aaron, and his eyes were pain. “Those mountains are all I have of her,” he finished, closing those hurtful eyes. Something in Hotch’s chest twisted, crushed, and he felt again a whisper of the agony he’d felt the day Haley had died. “Those mountains are Felicity. And you’ll never know her. Nothing I do can change that.”

“I can,” Hotch said. He thought of a yellowed letter tucked carefully between the pages of a book. “I can apologise. I was never a pack leader to you. I excluded and isolated you, even if not consciously aware of the damage I was doing. In that, I was no better than the wolves who abducted you. And I was wrong. Because of that distance between us, I wasn’t there when you were taken, and, I admit, my first thought and concern was of Emily.”

“She was your…” Spencer winced. “…mate. Of course you thought of her first.”

Hotch wondered just how close they’d gotten, in the long, frozen nights of the mountain winters. If they’d huddled close simply for warmth or if they’d found something more in each other. There was nothing sexual in their touches now, no burning need—but there was a deep emotional aspect to the way they held each other, the way they approached each other, that was so much more than he’d ever had with her. And then he shoved those thoughts away, because they didn’t matter. The past was the past. Pack was pack. Whether or not he ever called himself her mate again, she would always be pack. The rest didn’t matter.

“Run with me,” he offered cautiously. “I’ve considered you my pack for some time now, Spencer. You’ve never run true with a pack. There’s so much more to it than what you know.”

“I… don’t know…” Spencer murmured, averting his gaze. “I’ve never had a pack that was… well, I had Emily. And the pups.”

“You still do,” Hotch said firmly, because he refused to let the man believe that he’d lose his family to Hotch—not ever. “I don’t need an answer, not right now. But I am asking you to run with me—even if just this once.”

“Here?” Spencer’s eyebrow rose, his mouth slipping open slightly.

“We have three hours.” Hotch began to unbutton his parka, looking about for a tree to stow it in to keep it away from the frozen ground. “It’s not the mountains, no, but you can show me what it was to run here.” He was naked only a moment before shifting, the air stunningly cold and taking a long second to recover from as he hunched and shifted in his thick coat.

When he looked up again, Spencer was a wolf and he wasn’t shivering at all. And he didn’t look even slightly small, with the mountains outlined starkly behind him. He stood easily on the snow with his paws spread wide to hold himself up, completely at ease in this world. And suddenly, Aaron fully understood how this man had carried his family so far, alone and without a pack.

_Show me Felicity,_ Aaron said, brushing the strange, clever mind in front of his with a cautious touch designed for an acquaintance and nothing more.

After a slow beat of nothing but breathing, Spencer returned the touch. Just as cautious. Then, he slipped into Aaron’s mind, his pack mind, and replied, _Follow me._

 

* * *

 

It was a split-second movement, but Hotch had built his career around noticing what others found unnoticeable.

“Does anyone have any reservations about the planned entry?” the raid captain asked, and Spencer twitched. His mouth thinned.

And Hotch said, “Agent Reid does.”

A split-second movement. And in that moment, if Spencer had been who he’d used to be, he probably wouldn’t have said anything. Except he wasn’t that man anymore and, instead, he said, “We can’t make this entry. Not like this.”

The captain looked at him. Looking him up and down, from his barely-healthy weight to the gaunt look that still lingered in his eyes. Weighing him up. “Justify your response,” he said finally, with a reluctant tone in his voice. And Spencer did, right before outlining a new plan. Hotch listened with grudging respect. When Spencer was done, he backed it. It was a solid plan. Anything to avoid another Waco.

Not one person objected.

It would take them another day to make it to the compound using Spencer’s plan. “We have to make a detour,” Spencer had said with a thin smile, holding something in his hands. Hotch could see white material, folded carefully, but he didn’t know what it was.

“Alright,” said Hotch with a calm he was learning to feel. “Lead on.”

And here they were. _The human body is weakest at four a.m.,_ Spencer had told them. _Therians aren’t any different, no matter what species. We’re fundamentally tied to our circadian rhythm, and that’s permanently set to ‘homo sapien’._ The world around them was silent except for the muffled whisper of wolf paws on snow. They ran in a point—all twelve wolves who’d made the trip with them with Spencer and Ethan leading the way unerringly over a frozen, dark world. It felt as though they’d left everything else behind. Hotch shivered, his paws skipping a beat. Dave brushed his mind against his, a touch of support, but no one said a word. They were slipping in like the ghosts of the compound’s victims. Fifteen miles from where the helicopters had dropped them off in order to travel unheard over the snowy wastes. It was a nothing distance for a healthy wolf, even ones laden down with bullet-resistant vests. They ran into a foggy bank that pressed down on them and muffled every sense, but neither Spencer nor his brother faltered.

They pushed on until suddenly, as though they’d sprung out of nothing, they were slipping through a town made of silent, squat housing with windows heavily covered against the bitter chill. No dogs barked. No lights gleamed. It was a silent world made for paws and ice. They stuck to the shadows, of which there were plenty, and any tracks their paws made on the frozen crust of ice covering the roads were quickly covered by the light snow being blown about by a thin breeze.

Ethan led them straight to where they needed to go. Every sense straining, they were a dozen wired wolves sneaking to hunker down in the drifts of snow blown up against a brightly painted building.

_Stay here,_ Ethan said softly, on a private thread to the other wolves. They moved to the sides, ducking into the snow and digging down. It was rudimentary cover, but good enough. In the darkness, no one would see where the snow was dug at or heaped—but dark fur would stand out sorely. Hotch and Spencer, however, stayed. They followed Ethan into the building as he used his nose to nudge open the unlocked door. Of course it was unlocked. Who out here would wish them harm?

They stepped inside into the almost overwhelming warmth of the hallway after the air of outside. Paintings and murals ran down the walls, garishly bright in the dim light from low lamps set into the brick. The ceiling was low, the floor thickly rugged. Tiny coats and boots lined the hall. Their paws were silent, leaving wet marks on the plush carpeting. And deep into the building they crept. Spencer was almost vibrating with anxiety. Hotch nudged him with his nose.

_Breathe,_ he sent, and Spencer inhaled deeply and nodded, bat-ears perked forward and nostrils flaring red.

_Madeline?_ called a voice, a wolf stepping out from a room. She wasn’t looking their way, instead looking down to a sticker-bedecked door across the hall, but they froze anyway. _I told you, don’t walk around all night, with your clicky claws on the tiles. You’ll wake the oth—_

She’d turned and seen them. Her mouth slipped open. Hotch tensed his muscles to leap.

_Eleanor,_ said Ethan. _It’s me._

_Ethan?_ the wolf gasped. _But… they said you’d… you’re supposed to be dead? You don’t look very dead. Are you dead? Wait, does this mean Quinn is dead too? Or… isn’t dead too… what’s going on?!_

_Do you trust me?_ Ethan said roughly, striding forward. Hotch blinked. He’d never heard the mousey Reid _ever_ sounding this forceful, and had figured so many years under the cult’s thumb had crushed the fight out of him. _Nora, you need to answer me, now! Do you trust me?_

The woman stared at him. _Yes,_ she said finally, her mouth closing. _What’s going on? Are…are we running? Tonight?_

Hotch blinked.

Maybe Ethan was more like Spencer than he’d thought.

_Yes,_ Ethan replied. _And we’re taking the kids—all of them. Get them ready. Quickly—and quietly!_

The woman nodded, bounding into the room across the hall. _Go down to the boys’ dorm—wake them. They know you, Eth._

_Wait!_ Spencer shoved forward, his eyes wide. _Riley Re—Riley. A little girl named Riley, she’s twenty-eight months old. Is she here?_

The woman stared at him. _There’s no pup here by that name,_ she said slowly. _Spence? You… you’re alive…_

_Lionel’s a lying bastard,_ Ethan snarled, slipping past to move down the hall. _New pups, brought from outside without guardians—are there any of those?_

_Black fur with a white blaze on her chest,_ Spencer continued desperately. Hotch winced. He… hadn’t realized how much like her mother Riley would look until this moment. When he thought of Emily’s children, he pictured tan fur and hazel eyes. Oliver repeated three times over, all cautious eyes and worried tails. _You must have seen her! Lionel **took** her!_

_There was a little girl,_ the woman said slowly, her paws shifting on the carpet. Hotch’s heart sunk to the floor. In the dim light of the garishly cheerful hallway, he could see Spencer’s hackles rising in panic at the woman’s tone. _She was… ill. Lionel said she was ill, that she was infecting some of the others. He sent her to our sister compound, near Fireside. Her and another he said required treatment._

Spencer was stock-still, his eyes blank. Mouth slipping open just enough that a glint of white was visible. _And you **let him**? _ he snarled. The woman dropped; tail tucked and belly to the ground, instant submission to a more dominant mind bearing down on her. Hotch had never seen Spencer truly furious before. He doubted that, before Lionel had taken him, the man had been capable of this kind of cold rage.

_Spence,_ Ethan coaxed desperately, _not now. We’ll find her—I promise. But we’re running out of time to get all the kids out. If this goes to shit, I want them safe! All of them!_

Spencer swallowed, and then he turned and padded after Ethan, his shoulders down. _Wait here,_ he said to Hotch, his tone clipped. Hotch didn’t take it personally; it wasn’t aimed at him. _They don’t know you. We need to move them out and into the outskirts west of here before the signal comes—and then move due north as fast as possible to make the rendezvous._

_Will they come?_ Hotch asked.

_They’ll come,_ Spencer murmured, hate in his voice. _We’re using their own twisted ideals against them. Their children are taught that every adult has equal dominion over them, that they’re the collective possessions of the entire pack. And they’re taught absolute obedience to the pack and the greater good—they’ll follow us like rats to the Pied Piper._

If he sounded almost vengefully satisfied, Hotch allowed him that satisfaction.

_Go,_ he said, and lowered himself to wait.

The girls were first. _Paws, all of you. On paws,_ the woman—Eleanor—instructed them as they filtered out of the room, blinking sleepily and yawning. Hotch counted as they came. Twelve. _Now, shh. We’re playing a game, everyone. It’s a very important game—do you know it?_

_It’s the sneak game!_ one of the children at the back said, older and dancing about excitedly on wide paws. _We’re gonna sneak in the snow, just like you taught us._

_Quiet paws!_ chorused the others. _And soft voices!_

_That’s right—now shh. We start now. I have to get your coats. Everyone lay down, bellies flat. The best and flattest gets a prize at the end—older children, help your sisters._

Down they went in a wave of wagging tails and bright fur. Most of them peered curiously at Hotch as Eleanor shifted and went to work, expertly gathering coats and boots and affixing them to puppies one by one. By the time she was done, the boys were joining them, louder and bouncier than the girls had been. Small fights sprung up as the two groups meshed unevenly, shrill voices chattering in Hotch’s mind like parrots. He counted; they were up to twenty-three now.

_Is that everyone?_ he asked on a private thread to Spencer as Ethan and Eleanor worked together to get everyone dressed and quiet.

_No,_ murmured Spencer, his ears flat. _Riley isn’t here, and Arlo is gone too._

_Arlo?_ Hotch asked.

Spencer said nothing, just looked at Ethan and swallowed.

Ah.

Uneasy at the knowledge that two Reid children were among the ones missing from the dorms, Hotch stepped aside as pups lined up—two-by-two—in their motley array of coats and hoods.

_I’m thirsty,_ one whined.

_It’s cold—my glasses are dirty—where are we going? —is there going to be candy? —who’s that man?_

_Quiet,_ Ethan said. Enough force that every pup fell silent. _As of now, we’re hunters, all of us. We’re a hunting pack of wolves, and if you make any noise at all, the whole pack goes hungry. We must **sneak**. _ Towards the back, where the older children lined up, Hotch saw chests being thrust out proudly, tails held high. He fought back a smile, aware they were running out of time. Forcibly reminded of Jack the first time he’d caught a rabbit.

_Here we go,_ Spencer said brightly, dancing on his paws. _Shh shh, let’s go!_

_Shh shh, let’s go!_ the pups parroted, and they slunk as a wave of paws and fur towards the doors and out into the cold night air. The other FBI wolves closed in around them in a protective circle, and Ethan led the way behind the faculty and into the shadows of a frozen playground. They moved quickly and with surprising silence for pups. Paws crunched on snow, occasionally there was a muffled sneeze, but all were soft noises that the wind whipped away. Hotch lingered behind the straggling line, keeping a careful eye out for anyone veering away, seeing Spencer doing the same halfway up the line.

There were three clicks in the receiver in Hotch’s ear. _Three minutes,_ he sent to Ethan and Spencer. They coaxed the kids on faster, with nips and noses, before they broke out of the shadows and onto a wide flat plain. Behind them, the sleepy town ranged.

_Bellies down,_ Ethan whispered. _Here’s the surprise, everyone._ Flat in the snow, the children stared at him with fixed focus, all eyes wide and ears perked. _We’ve made this game even **more** fun! _ he continued. _Now, some more friends of ours are helping out—they’re going to make everything really loud in a second. Do you know why?_

_Because they’re bad,_ a girl pup answered, popping up out of her flat position to answer. _Like Lionel says—bad people come to tell us we’re wrong._

_They’re **pretending** to be bad, _Ethan corrected. _So we get practise in what to do when the real bad people come. As soon as you hear the noise, we’re going to run! Run as fast as we can, like a pack, towards the sea. Okay?_

_If we’re against the sea, won’t the bad people be able to catch us easy?_ an older pup asked nervously, his tail lowering. _And take us to the places where we’re not allowed to be pack?_

A ripple of worry passed through the pups. One began to cry quietly. Spencer slipped into the lines, nudging her with a gentle touch, cuddling her close until she stopped.

_No, because we have friends waiting for us there,_ Spencer answer, eyes flickering up to the sky where there was a dull _thwop thwop_ beginning to sound out against the cloudy banks pressing down. Fog eddied around them protectively, but Hotch could see lights dancing on the white screen above. _And they’re going to take you where it’s safe. But remember—it’s just a game, so don’t get scared. You’ll be home soon._

The receiver clicked once. Hotch turned. Lights were beginning to flicker on in the settlement as the noise was heard. Voices called out sleepily.

_Eth,_ Spencer said, nervous. More voices. More lights. Hotch winced as someone moved into view, before running towards the sounds and out of sight.

_Wait,_ Ethan said firmly.

More light. The town was coming alive. The helicopters approached. Hotch tensed.

And the warning howls began as the source of the noise was discovered. Moments later: a siren.

The helicopters burst out of the fog, wheeling above.

_Run!_ Ethan cried with a bark, leaping into the air. The pups squealed, spurred by his righteous energy, and rocketed forward into the white wastes.

They were running.

Hotch ran behind them; Spencer to the east; Ethan to the north; Eleanor to the west. They kept pups from straying. He used his nose and his teeth to goad the pups on faster. The wolves around them splintered away, leaving the four of them alone as they circled the settlement to ensure that no compound wolf followed the escaping pups.

A small pup stumbled and fell. The youngest of the pups they’d been able to get access to, the yearlings were tiring fast. Hotch picked her up, slowing to press the other small pups onwards. Any pups born this year were still being nursed in the medical facility, an area that Hotch sorely hoped would avoid any heavy fire—

Gunfire began behind them. Any pretence of a game faded as, at almost the same time, the fog cleared. A yellow moon glinted down on them, lighting up coats and glasses and wide, terrified eyes.

They were painfully visible.

_Faster!_ Ethan urged. _Quick, quick!_

They ran. Little paws stumbled. Pups were whimpering, crying. Behind them, the gunfire was joined by another sally. Hotch winced. Both sides were engaging.

The sea loomed up suddenly, white caps of ice sparse on the blue surface. They scattered out along the shore, booted paws sinking into the frosty rocks and sand, the air foggy from their mixed breath.

Someone shouted behind them. Wolves howled. Hotch whirled, his hackles up, sensing eyes turning in their direction.

_Where is he?_ Ethan asked wildly, eyes out to sea. Spencer stood next to him, his ears perked forward and his shoulders stiff. _He said he’d—_

_He’ll be here,_ Spencer replied firmly.

_How do you know? The guy didn’t even speak English. He might not have even—_

_Look!_ cried a pup. Hotch turned.

Through the blocks of ice, came the boats. A man sat in one. Hauled invisibly through the water, Hotch could see the ropes pulling the boats along dipping below the waves. He hadn’t quite believed Spencer, not completely. Not even when they’d landed where Spencer had directed them and found the lighthouse there. Not even when the man with the shotgun had walked out to meet them, his expression fierce and trigger ready. Not even when Spencer had walked forward and held out the white coat.

But maybe—just maybe—a small part of Hotch had started believing Spencer about the boat and the seals when the man had led them upstairs to a papered room, and he’d found Emily looking back at him from a gorgeously detailed sketch by the man’s bed. Two wolves, one black and one tan, facing a wild mountain range. The black wolf looked forward. The tan looked to the black. It was Spencer and Emily, and there was a wildness and a love caught in the sketch that took Hotch’s breath away.

_Whoa,_ gasped the pups as one, as the seals burst from the water and gambolled around in the shallows to make the children laugh, to take their minds away from the gunfire behind them. _Whoa!_ they cried again, as the seals became women who moved swiftly to lift each pup one by one into the waiting boats.

_It’s okay, it’s okay,_ Ethan told the ones who were frightened. _They’re our friends. Eleanor—help them. Get in that one._

_The third boat, who goes in the third boat?_ Eleanor was asking. The number of pups on the shore was dwindling. On the boats, the man was showing the pups how to lay flat, to avoid any unlucky falls into the dangerously icy water. _They can’t go in alone._

Ethan and Spencer looked to each other. There was a long moment.

_Find Arlo,_ Ethan said finally, wading out into the shallows. _Please._

_I will._ Spencer shifted closer to Hotch, watching as the lightning fast changeover was complete and the women turned back to seals, vanishing back into the water. _Come back at the signal._

Ethan nodded, in the third boat now with his paws on the helm. The man watched them curiously, his eyes ticking from Ethan to Spencer.

_Stay safe, brother,_ floated back across the waves, and then the fog closed around them and they were gone.

Without a word, the two wolves turned back alone to re-join the fight.

 

* * *

 

Their forces had surrounded the town with the compound wolves holed up in one of the centre buildings, a great hall that Spencer and Ethan had warned them would be where the wolves would mount a treacherous defence. They were armed, viciously so, and any of their men who risked entering through the dangerously welcoming open doors would find themselves walking through a gauntlet of fangs and claws and guns.

Hotch and Spencer found Dave examining the building from the north. _They know the children are gone,_ he warned them as they approached. _They’re not happy. We could have a siege situation here._

_Any casualties so far?_ Hotch asked. Dave nodded.

_Injuries on both sides, one casualty on theirs. Male wolf tried to get the jump on Hawkins. Shot from behind. We don’t know how many inside the building are non-combatants—there could be plenty of innocents in there for them to twist our arms with._

_There are,_ Spencer answered, his voice distant. Looking back over his shoulder and frowning, ears flicking. _You need to let me in there._

Dave blinked.

Hotch blinked.

_What?_ Hotch asked, shocked. _No. Absolutely not. You’re not walking in there—_

_He wouldn’t have sent Riley away,_ Spencer snarled, turning on Hotch. _He wouldn’t have! She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t contagious. It’s too much of a coincidence, Arlo being gone too. Lionel is possessive, controlling. He doesn’t like being beaten at his own game, and he doesn’t like losing what he perceives as his own. He’s vengeful. Sadistic. When I stood against him, he had me isolated for days in pitch darkness. He did the same to Emily when she refused his cause. He chased us relentlessly for days to get back what he thought was **his** —my children. Why would he just send her away after fighting so hard for her?_

Hotch considered that for a moment, before nodding slowly. Dave made a slow noise of distress, glancing around to the men ranged in position around them. _Why would Eleanor lie about Riley being taken away?_ he asked carefully, needing to know where Spencer’s mind was at before he made a call here.

_She wouldn’t. She has no reason to. She’s always been one of Ethan’s—there are those in that building there that are loyal to Ethan as well. He spent the years he was here building trust with the wolves of this pack. If it came down to it, some of them would follow Ethan over Lionel. Without a doubt. If they had a reason._

_A reason…_ Dave murmured. _A reason like Lionel turning out to be the snake he truly is?_

_A reason like Lionel doing the one thing we were indoctrinated into believing was the greatest sin of all,_ Spencer said firmly. _A reason like hurting a child. We live for the children. They are our future, the hope of our species. Aaron, I spent months chanting this drivel. We are God-given the ability to create children and the care of them is our greatest purpose, the truest aspect of Pack. If Lionel has… hurt… Riley, in any way, his wolves will turn on him. He messed up._

_He made them loyal to a cause, not to him,_ Dave finished.

_Let me in there._ Spencer stood strong and purposeful, his eyes burning and chest heaving under the FBI vest he wore once more. _Let me approach them. They won’t harm me—even though I ran, they still know me. They know Ethan. And there are those in there who will help me build doubt—if Riley is here, the key to ending this with minimal bloodshed is **finding** her. _The ambient sounds around them—the chatter of radios and men speaking, the wind, the distant wash of the sea—faded for a moment as Hotch stared at the man he still didn’t really know.

He thought of returning home to Emily, without Riley.

He thought of returning home without Riley and with Spencer in a pine box.

He thought of none of them returning home, and instead finding their graves in this arctic night.

And then, finally, he thought of a little girl who was lost and needed them to find her. A girl of his pack. A girl that Lionel was hurting to gain revenge over a mother he’d tortured. Anger came. But it wasn’t his anger, not purely. It was the anger of his entire pack.

_Okay,_ he said, and squared his shoulders and hoped he wasn’t making the wrong choice. _But don’t you die, Spencer. We’ve grieved you enough._

Spencer nodded.

The next twenty minutes passed quickly. Dave shifted back and returned dressed for the cold with a microphone in hand. They obtained permission for Spencer to enter the building alone.

He did. Every step across the empty ground between the ring of his colleagues and the building where they knew there were dozens of sights levelled on him was another beat of Hotch’s heart that skipped. Almost without permission, he inched after the tan wolf vanishing through the open door, without backup, without a wire, without his vest…

“Steady on, Aaron,” Dave murmured, resting his free hand on Hotch’s ruff. “He knows his job. He’ll be okay.”

They waited. There was silence from within. This was good. This was what they needed. The less casualties the better. There were families of wolves Hotch had led here waiting at Junction for good news, not coffins.

There was a startled ripple from the tense onlookers, and Hotch whirled just in time for Spencer to burst from the doorway, bounding out. Other wolves appeared behind him, slinking nervously and their eyes on the guns ranged at them.

“Stand down!” called Dave quickly.

_Lionel isn’t here!_ Spencer howled, panic in his voice. _They thought you had him—they thought we’d taken him. He’d be running—cutting his losses. This is his stressor, Aaron, his breaking point! We have to stop him!_

_Are they surrendering?_ Hotch asked, confused, as more wolves appeared. Spencer was acting manic, his scent frantic with fear, but the wolves behind him seemed scared and lost, not…

_He’s got Riley!_ Spencer snarled, turning on the wolves behind him. _He has my daughter and he blames **Emily** for us being here—he’ll hurt her to get back at us!_

_He wouldn’t do that,_ one of the compound wolves cried out, but the others exchanged glances.

_We protect our children!_ growled another.

_He struck her that time…_ whispered a third. _She was only crying. She was scared… she didn’t deserve it…_

Spencer roared, rage and fury turning his coyote call into a wolfish scream. The humans stared, eyes wide behind goggles and masks. Among themselves, the compound wolves bickered.

_Why are we listening to Spencer! He ran from us—we offered them a home, and they stole from us and left! They’ve proven themselves untrustworthy!_

Spencer snarled, teeth bared and hackles up. In that moment, he looked like Emily had the day they’d found her. Mad and wild and ready to spring.

_Steady,_ Hotch coaxed.

“Clear the building of weapons,” the raid captain was demanding, SWAT moving forward. “No one leaves this building. Hotchner, get them all shifted. I want every compound therian in human form and in one room. What’s going on?”

Hotch turned to his wolves. _Spread out,_ he demanded. _Search every building, every outpost, every road out of here—any scent of wolf that’s recent, track it. Go!_ He relayed the same information to Dave moments later as the man shifted to wolf and then back to human again, acting as the go-between for human and therian. Then he turned to Spencer: _We’ll find her, Spence._

_How can you know that?_ Spencer cried, eyes darting about the foggy buildings around him, like he was trapped in a nightmare. Maybe he was. This was exactly what the man had been running from for years. _You don’t know what he’s like!_

_I always said there was something wrong with Lionel…_ one of the compound wolves was saying, his eyes on Spencer. _What he did to your mate, that was fucked. That room…_

Spencer blinked. _The room…_ he whispered, and then shuddered all over. _The room!_ he cried again, and then ran. Past the loose ring of SWAT still armed and holding the perimeter, past Dave and Hotch who yelled for him. Past Morgan and Blake, and into the fog.

Hotch didn’t hesitate. The other wolves were already searching, but he knew a single shout from him would bring them running.

He followed.

 

* * *

 

The front door of the squat, grey building Spencer ran unerringly to was locked and barred. Hotch paused, his eyes skimming it. It was a square, imposing structure. Medical, in the kind of way that a hospice was medical. Giving off the same gut-sinking vibe of lost hope.

People had suffered here. The fur along Hotch’s back stood on end, his hackles rising.

Spencer darted around the door, his nostrils flaring red and his eyes wild. Scenting frantically. Hotch scented too. There was nothing but ice and salt on the air, to his nose. But Spencer had always been the best of them at tracking.

He didn’t even call out, just darted away with his nose to the ground and head already turning in the direction he intended to go before breaking into a sprint. Hotch had to race to catch up with the smaller wolf, startled by the sudden speed.

_Spencer—_ he barked, but the other wolf was gone.

_Where are you?_ came a floating thought from behind them. Dave, leading the other wolves. Hotch touched his mind, leading him towards them, before chasing Spencer down as the other wolf skidded around the corner and began racing full pelt along a high-tension wire fence. Hotch skidded after him, and had a split-second to take in what he was looking at. The thick cabling that rose over their heads in an imposing structure, mounted on a concrete barrier. The warning yellow bars.

_Spencer, **no**! _ he cried, seeing Spencer’s hindquarters bunch and tighten, ready to spring. _It’s electri—_

Spencer leapt. Hotch screamed out loud, a wolfish, horrified roar, closing his eyes without meaning to as his brain expected to hear the snap-crack of the volts slamming through his agent’s body, his nose expecting the acrid scent of burnt fur and flesh.

And then he opened them, to stare as Spencer scrabbled and climbed at the fence, hauling himself over the top and squeezing through the razor-wire strung up there. He left behind fur and blood as he toppled into the inner compound, but he made it.

_It’s turned off,_ Spencer threw back over his shoulder, racing towards a door. _Hurry!_

And he was gone, through the door. Hotch threw himself at the fence, clawing and scrabbling. His claws slipped, his paws tearing on the rough cables. It was too slick, too tightly wound for him to make it. He fell back to the ground. Tried again, falling once more. _Spencer!_ he barked. _Reid!_

Paws raced up behind him, feet following behind. The other agents. _Get in there!_ Hotch roared at them. _Break the door down—or a window—just get in there!_

There was a gunshot from within. The sound brought with it silence.

Hotch went cold.

He backed up. He ran. He leapt. His paws slid and slipped and found purchase, muscles screaming as he dragged his own weight up the sheer fence, clawing desperately for the top. A hand pushed at his haunches, boosting him that tiny bit more. “Go!” Morgan shouted, shoving him the final foot he needed, and he was over. Tearing through the thin gap between the razor-wire and the fence with his vest protecting him from the wire above, he tumbled forward and landed heavily, already moving through the pain.

The door hurtled up to him, the shouts of the people behind him growing distant. He slammed it open with his shoulder, already snarling as he lunged through. Spencer was a furious nightmare of a wolf, back arched and jaws gaping as he screamed with savage fury at the man standing with his back to the door and a gun on the wolf threatening him. Two children cowered behind Spencer, the larger one’s arms around the smaller.

The smaller looked to Hotch, her eyes hidden behind a curtain of knotted dark hair. Cried, “Mama!” and leapt up, running to him on clumsy toddler legs.

And a gun swept down. In that split second, Hotch met the eyes of the man who’d done this—the cold, blue eyes—and he knew how it was going to end. The man standing there hated the wolf in front of him; his hatred of Spencer was obvious and palpable. But, he hadn’t brought Riley to this cold, lonely room because of his hatred of Spencer. He’d done it because he _despised_ Emily. Because Emily had been, in some way, the downfall of everything he’d fought for.

And he wasn’t going to die without hurting her one last time.

“You would have been a great wolf without that bitch,” Lionel said coldly, looking once at Spencer. Hotch’s ears popped and rung. He leapt forward into the ringing silence, knocking Riley down underneath his bulk. Her arms came up, wrapped around his neck, her eyes wide with shock as she registered he wasn’t who she’d thought he was.

It took a split second. Hotch was pretty sure he’d leapt before the gun fired. Mostly sure.

Absolutely sure, when the side of his head exploded into pain and sound. A cacophony of white noise clamouring for attention along with red-hot pulses of complete disorientation. He slipped to the side and then skated back and then whirled along with the room spinning giddily around him, his balance and senses completely gone. Dimly aware of small hands digging tight into his ruff and dragging him sideways, and smaller hands clinging to his shoulder. Hauled one way and the other as his vison split and splinted and slowly reformed into six worried faces that became two that became six again, all of them wide-open and screaming soundlessly.

And the white-washed walls were red.

Hotch blinked and his vision returned. Almost. Mostly. Three became two and stayed that way, everyone moving around with a fuzzy ghost image of themselves following after. And, beyond the shocked children hanging onto his fur, two Spencers leapt onto two screaming men.

He used his muzzle to grab the girl in front of him gently, pulling her into his chest and covering him with her paws. The boy to his side was already burying his face in Hotch’s fur, pressed between the wall and Hotch. Neither could see Spencer killing Lionel. Hotch watched. He watched until his vision turned red and he became dully aware that he was bleeding and still deaf, still ringing.

He blinked and Lionel was a wolf and Spencer was in danger. Lionel was bigger, not as fast, but twice as strong. Another blink and Spencer was down, pinned below the rugged grey wolf’s scarred jaws.

Hotch tried to stand. Tried to snarl. Failed at both. And he was going to watch Spencer die, lose him again.

_I’m going to kill you,_ Spencer said calmly, his voice overloud in the silence of Hotch’s deafened perception. Hotch froze. He could see, in between blinks, Lionel staring. _But I’m not you. I won’t take a life lightly. I’m going to show you why._

Lionel laughed, his teeth inches from Spencer’s throat, and Spencer was calm. _What? You’re beaten, Reid. You’ve got no—_

Hotch felt it before Lionel did. Benefits of being _pack_.

But Lionel had once run alongside Spencer too. So, when Spencer threw out the memories in a cruel punch to both their minds that sent them reeling, Lionel hurt with them just as much as Hotch did. This wasn’t the gentle sharing he and Spencer had exchanged on the mountain. This wasn’t pack members rejoicing together. They weren’t even the painfilled memories that Emily had shared with him. These memories were tainted and red, and they were everything that Spencer had bottled up and let seethe and fester during their long journey.

Hotch hit the ground with a gasp, barely aware of registering that Spencer was shielding the children from this hate, but it wasn’t the room he was seeing with every blink anymore.

It was Felicity dying. Spencer had seen it. He’d watched. Hotch watched too.

It was the wolves who’d killed Felicity dying one by one as Spencer hunted them down with a ruthless intensity.

It was Emily convulsing as paralysis stole through her body, her eyes slitted shut and body wasted.

It was Emily snarled at him as they fought over a dead bird, barely a scrap of meat. The hunger was so fierce, so all-consuming, that Hotch would have killed her for the bird as well had he been in Spencer’s paws.

It was a compound wolf finding him dying on the prairies. _I could help you,_ the wolf had taunted, right as Emily’s scream tore across the land. _But I think they just found your bitch. You’ll die like a traitor, Spencer._ And it was Spencer using the last of his strength to stagger up and make sure that wolf never reached Emily.

It was death and it was hate and it was all the reasons Lionel had to die.

_Stop!_ screamed Lionel, shocking them both, and suddenly he was gone. Shifted. Hotch was alone, adrift in his mind. He blinked and the room snapped into view, Lionel staggering towards the door. He looked down at Hotch, his eyes huge.

He was crying.

He was crying until Spencer walked up behind him. Walked, not ran, and grabbed his ankle, dragging him down. And Hotch was deaf, so he couldn’t hear him beg, but he knew he was. But he wouldn’t stop Spencer. Not after what he’d just seen.

He lay there and watched.

He watched until Lionel stopped kicking, blood bubbling from white lips. But Spencer didn’t let go; his eyes were wild and his lips curled back, and he struck again and again and again until those cold eyes weren’t looking anymore but instead lost in a mask of red and pink and frothy white. His own hate and Emily’s burned in him.

He was a wild wolf and Hotch didn’t stop him. Until the door opened and black shapes filtered in through the narrowing lines of Hotch’s vision.

_He’s dead, Spence,_ Hotch murmured, letting the ground finally pull him down. A red wolf lingered overhead, speaking but saying nothing. _He’s dead… don’t let the kids see… he’s dead…_ And the red wolf became a red man, holding his arms out for the girl to throw herself into, without a care for the blood coating his face and chest. He caught her easily, despite one hand reaching for Hotch.

“Gone!” cried the girl. “The cat is gone, Daddy!”

“Good,” Spencer replied, and Hotch lowered his head. _Good…_

 

* * *

 

The bullet had skimmed along the crest of his skull, leaving a long groove of torn skin and fur, and slammed out through the bottom of his ear. The world around him was a muffled mess of skipping moments as chaos reigned around the shattered compound. And there was so much to do, and no one would _let him_ do it.

“You were shot,” Blake growled into his good ear, dragging him back to the medical bay they’d set up. Hotch gruffed at her, angry that his tail was betraying him and slinking between his legs. “Sit down and let the rest of us work!” And he was deposited, unceremoniously, back on the mat where their medical team poked at the thick wad of bandages weighing down one side of his head. Hotch huffed again, just to be sure they knew how grumpy he was, and looked at the other inhabitant of the tent.

Spencer was sitting on a fold-out stretcher, roughly cleaned with his knees drawn up. Wrapped in his embrace, both thickly wound with blankets, Riley was a toddler with her head on his chest and her eyes shut. Fast asleep. Even from here, with her head turned so her ear was pressed against her father’s beating heart, Hotch could see the swollen purple shadows under her eyes and the bruises and scabs littering the tiny hand that gripped his shirt. Huddled by his side, the little boy who’d been trapped with her was shallowly napping, snapping awake to stare wide-eyed at every sound. One of Spencer’s arms was wrapped loosely around him, and Hotch shivered to see the similarity between the elder Reid and his seven-year-old nephew.

Outside, not a single wolf still fought. Every one of them had lowered their arms at the news of Lionel’s death. Every one of them had lowered their heads in shame and shock as Spencer had walked out into their midst holding the sobbing and battered Riley. She’d been locked up alone with no one but her cousin to care for her in the same room her mother had suffered in; Hotch wished Lionel was still alive so he could kill him again for what he’d done to this family.

And if any fight had remained in the compound wolves, it had faded as soon as Ethan had walked back into town at the signal with every pup unharmed behind him. “It’s over,” he’d said quietly to the assembled wolves. “What’s happened here is over. No more.”

Just like that, the wolves bowed their heads to him. Ethan barely noticed, his attention locked on the small, shaking boy plucked from that nightmarish room, but Hotch had seen. Whether he knew it or not, Ethan was followed. The pack looked to him for guidance.

They would be transported first to Junction, where the families of some still waited. From there, they would be taken to Sanctuary, where Efisgan officials would ascertain which of them wished to be returned to the States and which of them wished to stay. DNA tests would be run on the pups to determine parentage. Ethan would be travelling with them, to both watch over those of the pack he’d walked with for so long, and also to find out which others of the children were his. Spencer just nodded blankly when he was told, exhaustion written all over his features. He was done. Whatever fight he’d had left in him, he’d used it up killing Lionel. He needed to go home to rest and heal.

He needed to go home to Emily.

Hotch understood that now. As much as it hurt, he understood. His place in their lives had changed. But that was okay, because they were all changed as well.

When the time finally came to move the wolves onto the transports and leave that cold, bleak place empty, Hotch walked by Spencer’s side with Riley in her dad’s arms, rugged up warmly against the cold. Spencer suddenly stopped, his free hand lifting from Hotch’s ruff into a sort of half-wave, half-salute. Hotch followed his gaze, seeing the man from the boats standing on the outskirts, watching them with pale eyes. Not a wolf. He raised his hand in return and smiled, before vanishing back into the snow. Spencer’s eyes lingered before he finally turned away.

Groggy with painkillers, the flight home passed in a hazy wash of sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking again. Hotch woke once to Spencer leaning over to point to something out the window as the helicopter banked, both he and Riley wearing large ear protectors. He thought he caught the word _polar bear_ , but maybe he’d imagined that. He woke a second time to Riley asleep and Spencer staring out the window with the light catching his cheek strangely. He didn’t need to ask what the man was looking down upon, because he already knew.

He wasn’t awake at Junction. He missed Spencer bidding his brother goodbye. He missed Dave leaning down to check on him and murmuring, _it’s finally over_ , and the sheer relief in his voice.

He woke to silence and Dave helping him upright. “We’re home,” Dave explained, as Hotch looked around wildly. It felt surreal, to step out of the helicopter and find tarmac and city instead of open, wild space and whirling snow. He paused on the cusp of stepping down, shivering despite the thick fur he was trapped in until the doctors gave him the go-ahead to shift without damaging his wound further.

An ambulance stood waiting for him. The others who’d been wounded were already gone. Pilots and flight workers milled about sleepily in the fading dusk. Overhead, a soft spring moon replaced the fading sun, making the airfield hazy and indistinct to his tired eyes.

But it didn’t hide what he looked down upon. Spencer, on his knees with his children in his arms, both of them. Oliver and Riley, hugging each other just as much as they were hugging their parents. Oliver was a wolf pup, wiggling and frantic, Riley a human.

Emily held them, one hand on Riley’s chin and her cheek pressed to Spencer’s. They were crying, all of them. They were together.

As the sun dipped low on the final day of their nightmare, she turned her head and kissed him.

And Hotch limped away, happy to be sad about this moment.


	37. Grateful Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Arc Ten: Chapter Thirty-Seven to Thirty-Nine**

She was unhappy.

The checkboxes didn’t fit her anymore. Oh, she tried. She tried _so_ hard to be normal, to be mediocre. To fit into the drab little boxes labelled ‘middle-aged single mother’. She took the kids to the park. She chatted with other moms at the grocery checkout. She tied her hair back in a stringy ponytail and wore clothes that were baggy and shapeless. She smiled at parents pushing their children in strollers and she bought her children toys they didn’t need to take up space they didn’t have. She did everything to be anything but ‘one of those Ghost wolves on the news’. The ones who weren’t quite right anymore. The ones who didn’t fit in with their packs anymore, who didn’t fit in in Efisga, who were referred to with terms like _dehumanized_ and _deprogramming_ and _learned helplessness._

But it was a thin veneer of normality and everyone could see through it. At the park, Oliver stayed as a puppy by her feet and snarled at anyone who came too close, flinching at every car horn or siren. Riley ran about with manic energy, too big and too rough to play with children her own age and too fiercely outspoken to be welcome with the older kids. She climbed trees and threw rocks and stalked toy dogs being walked on retractable leashes, laughing when the dogs snapped and barked at her. The moms at the grocery store made comments about the sheer amount of meat in Emily’s shopping—she found herself nodding along with the now expected _big dog at home huh?_ rather than answering by telling them _no, just two children I raised on goats and carrion who aren’t entirely convinced vegetables aren’t a conspiracy made to trick them._ The parents with their strollers stared at her children who she had to harness to _leashes_ to stop them shifting and bolting out onto the road. The baggy clothes she hated, but they hid her thin and scarred body. Any toys she bought were either destroyed or buried or ignored in favour of chewing on Dave’s couch, or hiding his shoes, or climbing his bookshelves to make nests on the upper shelves to hide food in.

“Never mind that,” Dave said cheerfully, reaching up a long arm to scruff Riley and drag her, puppy-formed and growling, down from the bookshelf, bringing with her a dozen bread rolls and a half-full carton of eggs she’d squirreled away up there. Emily, staring with horror at the egg oozing into the carpet, had lunged, apologising, for a cloth. “Riley, what are you doing, girlie? They’re not going to hatch, no matter how long you sit on them.”

Riley shifted, grinning toothily at Dave with a smile that was a threat more than a relief. “Get up with me,” she demanded. “We’re gonna get up like goats.”

“Goats don’t lay eggs either,” Dave scolded, hanging her upside-down in his arms. She squealed and giggled, arms flailing wildly.

“Yes, they do!” she hollered. There was a crash from a kitchen and a howl of terror, Oliver sprinting up the passage too fast for his legs to keep up on the hardwood floor, claws clattering wildly.

Emily just closed her eyes.

“Hey,” Dave said quietly. “It’s just stuff, Em. They’re adjusting. It’s only been a couple of months… give them time.”

_It’s just stuff,_ he said, when they found that the pups had apparently not taken as well to toilet training as Emily had hoped and had instead been going in the bottom of their closet. _It’s just stuff,_ when they found a stash of rotting meat hidden in the basement. Paw prints on the walls and bite marks on the sidings and everything Emily tried didn’t work, wouldn’t work.

“Why are you _like this_?” she found herself screaming one day, home alone and staring in horror at the torn and shredded remains of Dave’s duvet. Riley and Oliver stared, their eyes huge, frozen in the middle of a sea of downy feathers. “Why are you so naughty?!”

“I’m not naughty,” Riley whimpered, cowering down. “I’m not, Mama. I’m not.”

“You are!” Emily said angrily, shooing them off the bed. Shaking almost with frustration and exhaustion and just _everything._ And Spencer wasn’t here, he’d moved back to his apartment to _give you space_ and so she was dealing with the little fucking monsters _alone_! “You’re always naughty, Riley! And Oliver copies! Why do you have to be _bad?”_

Four eyes blinked and went, somehow, wider, before both children burst into noisy tears.

“Bedroom!” Emily shouted, pointing, and then stopped being mad almost instantly as both of them pelted away to the room they shared with Emily. Oliver’s tail between his legs and Riley slamming the door behind her, a snippet of dark hair and red cheeks visible before she shoved it shut with both arms. Emily closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and followed them, opening the door gently in case they were sitting behind it.

They weren’t. They were nowhere in sight. Emily sighed, lying flat and lifting the blanket up to peer under the bed. Riley stared back at her, wet and sniffling with her arms wrapped protectively around Oliver.

“Hey,” Emily said gently, reaching a hand out. Riley flinched back, breaking Emily’s heart.

“Not bad,” Riley mumbled, putting her mouth to Oliver’s fur. “Olly not bad too. Mama, we’re not bad.”

“No,” Emily said, flopping flat, exhausted. “You’re not bad, Riley. Mama just got mad. Mama is bad.”

Riley shook her head furiously, inching forward. “No!” she sobbed, hiccupping and gasping as tears tried to work themselves free, too worked up to actually cry. “Mama, no! Bad wolves go away. They go to the room!”

Emily froze. “What?” she thought she might have asked, but maybe she actually just stared.

“Don’t wanna go there again,” Riley sobbed, and shifted. A tangle of puppy in her pyjamas, she howled and Oliver howled with her. Emily scooted forward, grabbing a sleeve and hauling the whole sorry lot into her lap. They were wet, the both of them, and she could smell piss. Which could be either of them. Oliver was completely perplexed by just where he could and couldn’t go anymore, and Riley always messed herself when people shouted around her.

“Oh, babies,” Emily whispered, pulling them both close. “We’re so broken, loves. We’re so broken.”

She stripped them of the tangled clothes, carrying them silently to the bathroom and running the water. Their horror already forgotten, they wrestled and played in the water, trying to dunk the other. Emily watched numbly, before stripping off to climb in beside them and wash their hair/fur.

She paused. Caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of the room and straightened to stare at her cruel reflection. At the face that was still hollow and drawn, lined where it hadn’t been before. The lank, dark hair that hung lifeless around her thin features. The eyes that were too big and too hard for her face. She looked like someone who’d suffered, despite the months of decent food and healthcare she’d had since being plucked from Death’s clutches.

She looked like a wolf, even on two legs.

She moved, watching the muscles in her legs flex and move with her, watching the shift of scar tissue on her pale skin. Long lines up her arms and torso, marring her shoulder and breast. They were deep and ached when she moved and with the weather and just because they felt like hurting, impeding her movement and making her breath feel tight. And, worst of all, the scar that was a mirror of the one that Quinn and Ethan and even Spencer bore too. The thick, red line of ropey mass around her throat, puckered at intervals where the spikes of the collar had ridden her flesh and only slightly distorted by the puncture wounds where Lionel had tried to crush her throat. Spencer’s was nowhere near as bad. Ethan’s was close. Quinn’s was obscured by the savage bite wound she’d obtained so many years ago, a product of the serum that had cost them so much and saved them so little.

A splash and a giggle behind her and she turned to find Riley peering at her from the bath, bubbles in her hair. Oliver hunkered next to her, shoulders bowed over his thin chest and eyes skittering about, so rarely in his human form that her breath caught a little to see it. Brown hair hung in lank curls around his scarred face, the bite of the wolf that had tried to rip him from his father’s arms a rough jagged line of scars on the right side of his cheek and mouth. He’d need surgery to fix where it had reformed his mouth, to enable him to talk without a severe lisp, once he was old enough to understand he couldn’t shift while it was healing. Without the scars, he’d be a tiny Spencer, and she gasped to think of how Feli—

_No,_ she thought, and shook herself away from that.

“Nana i… ih ti-ti…” Oliver trailed off, frowning, his mouth moving as he tried to sound the word out. “Ti-dee…”

“Pretty,” Riley finished for him, tangling her fingers in his knotty hair and tugging. He yelled. “Mama is pretty.”

Emily smiled, despite herself, crouching to detangle the two before they started fighting. “Thank you, Oliver,” she said, running her finger down the scar on his shoulder and arm and tickling him at the end. He blinked and grinned crookedly, the scar giving him a roguish, lopsided look. “You look pretty too.”

But, as she climbed into the bath with her two children, she ached. Spencer’s absence, while she understood the need for it, was a physical discomfort. She wanted her pack around her. She didn’t want to do this alone anymore.

She didn’t know how to ask for help anymore.

 

* * *

 

“How are you?”

She snapped her head up, lip curling into half a snarl before relaxing as she recognised Aaron. He was faking a casual kind of regard, his hands slung into his pockets and shoulders calm, but the skin around his eyes was tense and his gaze was locked on her. She lowered her paperback and pulled her thin legs up self-consciously, only realizing she was reaching her hand up to tug her hair over the scars around her neck after she’d done it.

“Fine,” she lied, looking around for somewhere else to focus on other than his uncomfortable regard. Around them, a warm early summer sun cast a yellow-orange glow onto the lake and the cabin they were staying in.

_We’re going on a goddamned holiday,_ Dave had announced, having found Emily sitting in the pantry bawling because she’d dropped a jar of pickled olives. _All of us. Get the kids out and playing with others who won’t run away from them._ Or tease them, or pull Riley’s hair, or screech when she bit them in retaliation, or mock Oliver’s scars… the list of ‘ors’ was endless.

And so here they were, on the land that Dave’s pack had used to run on before dissolving as their children had grown up and moved away and had human children instead of wolf. There were countless places like this now. Pack lands held in trust for wolves who would never run there again, the facilities and housing on them growing old and being reclaimed by the wild land around them. They were a fading people.

Some sharp, noxious part of Emily’s mind looked at it all and whispered: _this was why Lionel did what he did. You’re obsolete._

Aaron lowered himself to sit next to her, finally looking away. Emily followed his gaze to where Spencer was showing Jack and Henry how to float waxed paper boats out onto the lake. Oliver sat by his knees, watching curiously but without engaging. Riley was god knows where, probably up a tree somewhere, stealing nuts from squirrels. Or eating rabbits. Or—

“I miss you,” Aaron murmured, and Emily’s gut dropped with a cold jolt of shock. And he still wasn’t looking at her. “We haven’t… talked. Since you returned.”

“You’ve been busy,” she replied awkwardly, wondering where the sassy, suave Emily Prentiss of old had gone.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he corrected her. And she realized; he wasn’t watching the kids. His eyes were on Spencer. “And him, incidentally. I know you are—I go around there three times a week, and he hasn’t mentioned you once.”

She blinked. “You… go to Spencer’s?”

Aaron nodded slowly. “We play chess.” His fingers were playing with the grass near the towel she was sitting on, twining the blade around his thumb. “Or discuss books. Or he watches movies with Jack.”

“Why?” She dearly, dearly wanted to know, and worried that that eagerness showed in her uneven tone.

“He’s lonely,” Aaron murmured. “He misses his children.” Each word was a blow, sinking guilt into her heart. She’d been so worried about herself and how she was coping, she hadn’t even asked Spencer… just assumed that he’d slotted evenly back into life like she couldn’t, back into the quietly isolated corner he’d occupied contentedly before they’d been taken.

“I’ve never stopped him from visiting them,” she said weakly, because that was one thing she’d absolutely never do, not ever. “I’ve never asked him to leave.” Because she’d never wanted him to. It had been his idea, his wish. She refused to cling. Refused to hold him back from healing, in any way he needed to be. She wouldn’t be the weight that dragged him down.

“I know. He told me. Many times. Did you know JJ invites him over for dinner every Sunday now?” Emily hadn’t. Aaron wasn’t finished. “After a few weeks of that, he started coming around early to play with Henry before they ate. Now, he often stays the night while JJ and Will have a night of their own.”

“JJ… lets him babysit?” Emily asked, surprised. She turned her head to look at JJ, sunning herself in her wolf form on the pier with her white-gold fur gleaming healthily in the sun. Emily fidgeted, uncomfortable and slightly jealous. She hadn’t taken wolf form since coming home. She couldn’t face it. “JJ… never liked him.”

“He’s a part of our pack,” Aaron murmured, “and he adores Henry. On Sundays, he sees them. On Saturdays, he spends his mornings with Morgan helping him with the houses he owns and he spends the nights playing chess with Gideon. As often as I can, after work, I take Jack around to visit him. He’s teaching him how to knit.”

Emily blinked. “Spencer knows how to knit?”

A chuckle was her answer. “You lived with him for two years and didn’t know that?” Aaron teased gently, before his smile faltered. And just like that, veneer of normality was gone. The day felt a little colder.

“We were preoccupied with other things,” Emily replied, staring at her feet. An ant marched across them. She wiggled her toes, still getting used to _having_ proper toes.

“On Thursdays,” Aaron continued, after a long, awkward silence, “he goes to therapy.”

And that sat between them, heavy and shocking and real. Emily swallowed. “What’s your point?” She found the flicker of her oldest flame, and willed it to life. The anger that burned in her. It was still there, still waiting, and probably always would be. After all, she hadn’t been there when Lionel died. She hadn’t had that joy of feeling his life end, and she focused her gaze on the way Aaron was growing his hair out around his ears to hide the damage the bullet had done to his right side. And now she was angry, truly angry, and saw his nostrils flare as he scented that.

“My point is that he’s adjusting, but he’s not happy. And you’re not either. Why are you pushing each other away? You clearly love him.” There was frustration and bitterness in his voice that she knew shamed him, but he was pushing through anyway. Asshole. He couldn’t even be jealous properly without making her feel crap for him feeling that way.

“No fucking shit I love him,” she spat, because the anger was throbbing, hot, and pointing out that it was her damn _prerogative_ to be alone if she wanted to be. She hadn’t walked halfway across the continent for a prize cock at the end of her journey—she’d done it for a _life_. “He died for me, Hotch, he fucking _died_ for me. He carried me, he hunted for me, he stuck his arm right the fuck inside me and pulled our children out into the world—you think I’m so cold that I’d turn away from him after that?!”

‘No,” said Aaron calmly, and she’d always hated how intolerably placid he could be when all she wanted to do was fight. “I think you’re trying so hard to be there for him you’ve convinced yourself the best thing for him is to leave him alone. And it’s hurting both of you.”

She opened her mouth. She tried to say something.

She said nothing.

Aaron stood, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. She stared, perplexed. “Run with me,” he said, and it was an order. There was a snap to his voice and a glint to his eye. “Come on, Emily. Lionel took three years of your life away from you. That’s it.”

“That’s _it_?” she snarled, angry again.

“That’s _it_ ,” he repeated, taking a step back and curling his lip cockily. She was almost shaking with anger now. How _dare_ he? Didn’t he _know_? Didn’t he fucking _know_ what they went through? The hunger and the pain and the fear and the loneliness— “He’s dead and you’re still letting him beat you.”

“He _never_ beat me!” she said with a growl to her voice, standing and bunching her fists, shivering. “I _never_ let him win. I never submitted.”

“Didn’t you?” He took a step forward. He was close now. Too close. She rumbled. His dark eyes bore down into her. “You look pretty beaten to me. Hiding your scars. Hiding your fur. Hiding your heart.”

“Fuck you.” She spat it, turning her head away. “Fuck you, Hotchner, you smug, self-satisfied holier-than-thou _prick_. You don’t know—”

“What you went through?” He cocked his head, the wolf flickering in his eyes. And just like that, she was dragging her dress off, shaking the fabric to the ground, vibrating with a need to _rage_. “No. I don’t. Show me. Prove to me that you didn’t lie down for him. Prove to me that you’re still _you_.” He turned on a dime and leapt into his wolf, and she rocketed after him. Two beats on human feet and suddenly the ground was flying under paws, her hunting gaze locked on the black wolf running in front of her. They hurtled past the lake and the startled children and they hurtled past what looked like Dave teaching Riley how to set fires and then they were in the woods and running.

_Show me_! Aaron called.

So, she did. She ran until she was side by side with him and then she slipped into his mind and the sunny deciduous forest around them became cold and dark and snowy. They ran together on the lands that Dave owned and, in their minds, they ran together on tundras and on mountains and down rivers and valleys. Their paws hurt. Their sides ached. They grieved anew as they passed a quiet stream and a lonely grave. Aaron roared in fury as a storm blew around them and wolves cackled in the distance. They ran over a frozen bog of lakes until the compound yawned around them and they felt lonely, mad, cold, lost.

And then he took her mind and they turned as one, running away from that place again. To prairies and to dens and to quiet winter nights curled around one another in a sleepy huddle. They ran and they ran and they ran until Emily’s lungs burned and she remembered a winter, long ago, when they’d run together and fallen in love. She reached for that feeling.

It wasn’t there anymore and she cried out with the loss, as though she’d been so focused on those haunting memories that she’d neglected to find the exact moment she’d stopped loving Aaron Hotchner and fallen in love with Spencer Reid instead.

_There wasn’t a singular moment, Emily,_ Aaron said, slowing until he was trotting. She slowed with him, head bowed with the raw exertion and sides heaving. _You never stopped loving **him**_ —and the memory flickered back, as fleeting and effervescent as a bubble of soap. The black wolves running together. _But I’m not him anymore._ He walked to her, his eyes sad, and leaned his muzzle on hers. And this time, the memories were his.

He showed her grief. He showed her frantic hope. He showed her the months and months of searching for them; he showed her his fight and he showed her that he’d struggled too and he showed her holding Jack as his son sobbed for the ones they’d lost. He showed her the pack, howling for them to come home. Diana, curled up and grieving her sons. Elizabeth, crying for her daughter. Dave, furious for what had been done to them.

And then he moved beyond the stagnancy of looking for her, and he showed her the change that had happened in between those chapters of his life. He showed her that there wasn’t just grief. Grief had driven him, yes, but he’d put it aside. He’d led a pack, and he’d done it for the pack, not just for her. He’d stood up and said _wolves matter and we matter,_ and he’d done that because it was the right thing to do. He showed her that he wasn’t the same Aaron, the law-bound man who hid his wolfishness behind his suits and frown, but that he was a wolf and a leader and a pack-bound man. He showed her the duty he knew he had not just to the wolves of his family, but to his people as a whole as well—to every therian.

Because he was a household name now—the Aaron Hotchner who’d walked into the wild after a ghost and come back triumphant leading the lost wolves behind him—and there was so much more he could do as this Aaron than as the one she’d known. So much more he meant to do.

_I’ve changed since the day you were taken. I’m not the man you remember, and I never was the idea you clung to in order to stop yourself from going mad. Just like you’re not the woman I walked alongside, the Emily Prentiss I fell in love with and vowed to love forever._

_Some forever,_ she commented bitterly, her chest tight and heart aching. She knew what he was telling her. That she _had_ lost something, out there in the wastes, and she needed to stop trying to find it because it was gone. But she wasn’t ready to quit on herself. Was she?

Aaron shook his head, his proud shape barely marred by the tattered ear and puckered, furless skin on his right side. _No. I still love her. And I love you because she’s a part of you—but it’s not the same. And it would be doing both of us a disservice to pretend that it is._

_Aaron, are you breaking up with me?_ she said, trying for levity and failing. Despite everything she’d survived, she was still weak enough that this hurt. _Giving me the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech._

_I’m trying to tell you why you don’t need to run from us anymore,_ he said, and looked back in the direction they’d come from. _We’re different, but we’re still pack. I’m not the Aaron who loved Emily Prentiss, and you’re not the Emily who could return that love. I don’t think you’re even the same Emily who fell in love with Spencer on the mountain—he’s definitely not the same Spencer. But that’s something you two need to work out, because it’s deeper and more painful than anything we’ve ever had. But I **am** the Aaron who will run by your side, forevermore, as your pack and as your friend, if nothing else. _

She let that sink in, the hurt fading. This wasn’t an end after all. He wasn’t here telling her that she was broken or less. He was telling her that she was _changed_. And he was telling her that that… was okay.

_Well, duh,_ she said finally, taking a deep breath that expanded her chest and made her feel powerful and steady on her sore paws. _You invaded another country for me. I should think it would be weird if you fucked off now._

He laughed, relief sounding in his voice. And sadness too, but a warm kind of sadness.

They were over, but not really.

_You’re still your own wolf, Em,_ he said. _It only took pissing you off to make you realize that._

She rolled her eyes at him and padded after him, back to their families waiting.

 

* * *

 

Emily woke from a restless sleep to Spencer leaning over her with a hidden smile on his lips and Oliver in his arms, blinking sleepily.

“Shh, Mama,” Riley whispered, pressing both hands to her mouth and beaming. “We’re snucking.”

“Sneaking,” Spence corrected, tugging Em up and leading her to the door with silent, bare feet.

“Snucking,” Riley repeated stubbornly, almost stepping on Henry’s camp-bed. Emily smiled, picking her daughter up and carrying her out into the night.

“What are we doing?” Emily whispered, following Spencer down the grassy slope to the lakeside. It was a warm night and the sky was clear, revealing endless stars above.

“I’ve missed this,” Spencer murmured, pulling her close and wrapping his arm around her with their children between them. “I’ve missed the stars. The breeze.”

“The moon,” Emily agreed, realizing she was standing tense and letting her muscles relax. And just like that, she curled against him, her head on his shoulder and eyes watching the glint of stars on the lake. “Being… outside.”

“Mmm.” Spencer swayed against her, his mouth against her hair. Oliver was already asleep. “Stunning.”

They lay on the grass, curled together, and Emily was awake long enough to feel Spencer slip into a gentle sleep in her arms. She traced his body with her hands, feeling sharp bones and long lines as he folded gently into her. His hair was shorter, soft and clean between her fingers, his skin warm. She threaded her fingers through his and watched the moon skate across the sky. Riley slept as a puppy draped across their legs, pyjamas still awkwardly in place. Oliver slept snuggled belly-down on his dad’s chest, snoring gently and leaving a pool of drool in the hollow of Spencer’s neck.

At some point, Emily drifted off into a half-sleep, lost in the contentment of her own mind. With family and with her pack slumbering safely nearby. Nothing here could harm her…

Paws padded across the grass towards them. She woke quickly but efficiently, turning her head to watch the salt-and-pepper wolf look down at them. The look in his eyes was clear. _Come on then,_ he was saying, and she sleepily rolled out of Spencer’s arms and left behind her loose shirt and slacks as she replaced them with her fur.

They walked in silence into the quiet woods, padding through shifting trails of cobblestone pathways that were twisted and overgrown and smelled of deer and skunk. Dave led her unerringly up the rough slope of the hills behind his lakeside cabin, crossing the boundary into the Shenandoah National Park, where his family had once been caretakers. And still no words passed between them until they broke from the thin trees and out onto a rocky ridge that curled along the edge of the valley before dipping low into the trees once more, the bubble of a stream nearby making her ears twitch. In the distance, she could see the peaks of mountains and the white gleam of a large river twining like a snake through the forests.

Below them, there were ruins.

_Where are we?_ she asked, staring down at the overgrown tangle of what was obviously once kept lands. She could even see the side of a house just slightly visible behind a rise of trees, empty windows staring back accusingly at her from their shadowed depths.

_My Grandma on my paternal side used to live down there,_ Dave said, looking down at the house. _She gave it up when my father married my mother, said we were never coming home now so there was no point. I never knew it when it was new or alive. Just… like this. Quietly fading away into the wilds. And now it’s a ruin, all that’s left of the Dark Hollow wolves._

_Dark Hollow? That’s a grim pack name._

Dave laughed, his tail tocking twice against the stone he was sitting on and the moonlight making his fur glint silver. _Named for the waterfall nearby,_ he replied, ears flicking. _Do you want to have a look?_

_Why?_ she asked, curious. Dave rarely did things without reason.

He was already leading the way down a narrow deer-track, paws careful on the loose shale. _Because,_ he said simply, _things that are fading aren’t doomed to fade completely. I bet, if we look hard enough, there’s still something of my Grandma left down here._

She followed him down. _Does it feel weird coming here?_ she asked, watching an owl swoop overhead. It watched her back, huge eyes unblinking, and then wheeled away. She heard a rabbit shriek and congratulated it silently on its dinner. _Like going backwards in time._

_Nah. Nothing wrong with going back to something beautiful. Even now, even wild… it’s beautiful. You’ll see._

He was right. The gardens, although lost, Emily could tell had once been carefully arranged so that they were wild and at their best when they blended with the forest surrounds. Wildflowers and trees and small ponds thick with algae dotted the seedy lawn they trotted over. And then they turned a corner, into the shadow of the hill behind and truly into the valley, and found the house. She—Emily wasn’t the type to give non-sentient things a gender, but it truly _felt_ like a she—was lost. Eaten away by trees and vines, but under that all, she was grand. Built in the old pack style, she sprawled easily into the forest surrounding her with multiple wings and walls designed to fold back during clear weather to let the world outside in. But there was a dead oak fallen through her east side, every window was gone, and Emily could see sagging in her carefully shaped roof.

_Still beautiful,_ Dave said quietly, looking up over the chimneys lining the peak to where the moon seemed to balance overhead. _I told you so._

Emily blinking, seeing nothing but a ruin. Then, she looked again. Imagined it during autumn, with the forest turning red and gold around it. Imagined it during winter, with the ponds frosted over and snow glittering on the fallen oak, ice creeping up the rotting branches. Imagined it in spring, with the wildflowers burning with colour.

_Oh,_ she said. _She really is._

And Dave smiled, his thoughts turning cheeky. _See,_ he said, turning to her. _Wild doesn’t mean gone._

 

* * *

 

They went home. Emily moved out into an apartment with two bedrooms and they all slept in the one. Spencer stayed there as often as he could, moving from the couch and back into her bed without either of them really discussing it, their children sandwiched between them. But he was distant, distracted. Summer was ending and they were tiring of ticking boxes.

Riley was turned away from three pre-schools until she got her temper and her shifting under control.

The doctor she was taking Oliver to about his refusal to shift began to murmur about medication to ease the boy’s night terrors and constant anxiety. “He doesn’t need medication!” Emily wanted to scream, “he just needs something _other than this_.”

This tiny apartment. This tiny city. The narrow green grids that had once felt welcoming and now felt stifling.

She tossed up going back to work. She failed her physical. The botulism had left enough weakness in her muscles that they were wary of putting her back in the field.

Elizabeth was busy with the other wolves they’d rescued, having become the official spokesperson for their plight. In the many dinners they had, —with Emily stiff and awkward and Elizabeth doting over her grandchildren—Elizabeth tried to talk to Emily about the work she was doing, about the change they were bringing.

Emily didn’t want to know. That was their nightmare. She had her own.

The white-washed walls of her tiny apartment began to look like other white-washed walls. She stopped sleeping. Her appetite faded.

She was unhappy.

She woke one night to Spencer crawling into the bed beside her. In the dim light leaking in from the hallway, she could see him looking down at her. The children slept. “Did Lionel suffer?” she asked suddenly, the first time they’d talked about it. “When you…”

Spencer winced. “Yes.” He leaned down, brushing his lips against her forehead before using her chest as a pillow and curling himself around Oliver.

She thought about that for a bit. “Good.”

But it didn’t really help.

They took the children to visit Diana, who was silent. Their loss had broken something inside her, something integral. Maybe she thought they were a hallucination, a hopeful delusion. Whatever she thought, she did nothing but stare out the window at the grounds of Bennington as Spencer tried to pretend everything was fine and the children inched away warily.

Afterwards, Emily held Spencer as he cried and cried and cried and they left without telling William they’d been there at all.

“I have to go away for a bit,” Spencer said suddenly one day. Emily’s heart sunk. They were exactly what she’d feared they’d become, with their renewed closeness—frighteningly co-dependant—and she shivered to think of the nights alone with the children and no-one else. “Ethan is still being classed as a Barrow refugee. I need to go help straighten that out so he and the children can leave the refugee camp they’ve been placed in for those survivors without a pack.”

“Your father hasn’t spoken for them?” Emily asked, frowning.

Spencer shook his head slowly and said no more. And then he was gone.

The room loomed closer, more stifling. The noises outside louder. The nights longer. The days lonelier. Emily dreamed of the compound and she dreamed of Spencer dying and she dreamed of walking alone through a fading summer forest.

And then she woke. It was the middle of the night, on the final day of summer. The window was open and Riley was sitting on the floor watching the moon. “Pretty,” she said when she saw Emily was looking at her. “Mama, look how pretty the moon.”

In that moment, Emily decided. She packed them a backpack each and strapped them into the car-seats they hated. Bedding piled between them as they wiggled and grumbled. Oliver held his stuffed bunny. Riley folded her arms and frowned at the world. They stopped at a twenty-four-hour grocery store on the way out and she filled the trunk with non-perishables. And then they drove.

The lake was just how she remembered it. Silent, now, with all the vacationers gone. She took the bedding first and made a nest under the stars, before stripping the children of their clothes and her own beside them. They shifted together and curled up in the blankets; three happy wolves with the stuffed rabbit peering down over them like a guardian.

They slept soundly and didn’t dream.

The next day they chased rabbits. Emily let Riley show her where all the best climbing trees were. She chased them through the woods, laughing and nipping at their wagging tails. It couldn’t last, but she didn’t think of tomorrow.

The next day, she walked alone to the lake to drink and found a black wolf waiting.

_I honestly thought Spence would be the first to come,_ she told Aaron, sitting next to him and leaning her shoulder against his. He was watching Riley and Oliver playing in the shallows, chasing the tiny fish that swirled there. _I left him a note saying where we are._

He looked at her, his tags clinking against his chest. She winced. Hers were sitting on the dresser at home, along with the tiny wrist-bands rimmed with yellow rubber that her children had been issued. They felt wrong. Too much like being collared.

_I found the note,_ he said quietly. _I wanted to see if you’d mind if Jack spent some time with the pups. He gets lonely._

Emily didn’t answer and that was answer enough. He looked back out at the lake, at the sun and the trees and the wild green beyond.

_Aaron…_ she murmured, and he shook his head and sent a warm feeling of _love_ back at her.

_If you have to go,_ he said firmly, _go. We’ll always be here waiting. Pack doesn’t stop being pack because of something silly like distance._

_I’m not going far,_ she replied, brushing her nose against his.

_Where are you going?_

She laughed, a real laugh. It was surprised and over-loud, as though the sound was unfamiliar to her now, but she stood and looked down at her reflection. She saw fur that was almost grown back where it had so recently been thin and patchy. She saw a glossy, healthy wolf with shadowed eyes, and Aaron sitting beside her.

_Somewhere beautiful,_ she said, and meant it.


	38. Sanctuary Sunrise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the light of day, there was nothing brilliant or beautiful about the house. Emily padded up the weed-strewn drive, feeling neglected gravel shifting under her paws, peering up at the second floor above. Empty windows peered back, grim and unblinking and ringed by the broken balcony.

_This is a yuck house_ , Riley declared, flouncing.

Oliver was quiet. _I like it,_ he said finally, lowering his head shyly. Emily gave him a kiss for being brave enough to speak his mind, her tongue dwarfing his little pink nose. His butt and tail wiggled happily in response.

And now, problem. She wanted to look inside. Just to _see_. But she had no idea what was in there and Riley was in her ‘have hands, will touch’ stage of toddlerhood.

_Sit,_ she told them sternly. _Stay._

Oliver sat, tail still wagging. Riley just cocked her head to the side, one ear perked. It was a look that Emily could practically see the, _hah, yeah right_ written all over. Hmm. What would have made Emily sit and stay at three…?

_Riley,_ Emily purred, slinking close and curling a paw around her daughter, _I have a very, **very** important job for you._

_Ooooh a job for me, not Olly,_ Riley whispered, inching close and sitting up onto her haunches, whiskers twitching. _Tell me, Mama, tell me, quick quick!_

_I need you…_ Emily looked around the woods for quick effect, eyes wide… _to watch out for **bears!**_

_Bears!_ both kids gasped. Oliver whined, tail drooping. _Oh no, bears,_ Riley continued, bobbing up and down excitedly. _Where’s a bear, Mama? Is it gonna eat Olly?_

Oliver shivered. _No_ , he said, but he didn’t sound entirely sure. _Is it?_

_Not if Riley does a very, very good job and stays right here where the bears walk. And if she sees a bear, you both have to howl—quick, show me a bear howl!_

“Awwwwwo!” howled Riley.

“Woo…” whined Oliver, fuzzy brows lowered in concern about the hunting bears.

_I’m watching, Mama, promise,_ Riley said, and sat square in the middle of the drive with her little chest thrust out proudly. Chuckling, Em slipped away, making a mental note to tell Spence about this as soon as possible…

Paws faltering, she automatically cast about for the touch of his mind, and found nothing.

_We’re here,_ the pups’ minds chimed back, brushes of _love_ against her. She smiled and put aside her sadness. Spence would find her when he was ready. He always had, he always would. And she had to explore fast—she doubted even bears would hold Riley’s attention for long.

The front doors sagged on rusted hinges, the strong old oak still mostly undamaged aside from where the bottom had dragged on the cement below. Emily snuffed, wincing as she smelled skunk piss, and slunk through into a dim, vaulted foyer. The carpet was gone, with only mouldering remains left kicked up in the corners where animals had nested in it, the wallpaper hopelessly torn and crumbling. The light fixture creaked softly overhead, swaying in the breeze swirling in from the broken ceiling above. Emily picked her way over masonry and twisted wood, eying the stairs that had dropped in on themselves that would lead up to the second floor. She’d been in a house like this before, a long time ago. Staying as a guest in France in the old-style werewolf pack homes; she knew that if this one followed the French style, the floor above would be communal pack rooms—a library, perhaps, living rooms, playrooms for pups. And the first floor, as she picked her way carefully towards one of three open, arched doorways, would have a hall that circled around the single inner room—a communal kitchen, dining hall—with the living wings lining the outside, all with their own outside access.

That was what she found. She explored the rooms she could, finding more rotting, empty spaces with missing floorboards and broken-down walls exposing the forest outside, feeling cold and sad for the lives that had lived here once and wouldn’t again. If she closed her eyes and ignored the lingering scent of rot, she could pretend to hear the paws and feet running up and down the halls, the giggles, the feeling of _pack…_

She opened them again. A door sat in front. Reorientating herself, she figured she was probably more towards the back of the sprawling hall, the northern side. Here, the carpet still survived. Stiff and dusty under her paws, but mostly intact, she left a cloud of dirt particles floating in the air behind her as she walked along it. The inner hall had solved the innate claustrophobia of its inhabitants with wallpaper that was a vivid mix of forest and rivers and mountain vistas. Here, she could still see some of the intricate designs. It wasn’t to her taste, but she could appreciate the skill that had gone into the delicate lines and swirls of nature around her.

She nudged open a mostly undamaged door into a family wing, slipping inside into a narrow space for greeting guests. Further in, through the musty silence until she felt as though her senses had been disconnected somehow, she nudged another door open with a loud _creeeak_ , and stepped into the forest.

The room was fairly undamaged, considering that the wall leading to the forest outside was folded back and bent inwards. Wildflowers had begun to grow inside, on piles of dirt blown in, but the rain had been kept away by the sheltering bows of a large tree leaning against the outside wall. Shadows and light danced on the walls as the tree waved its branches at her. Outside, a sprawling view of the valley revealed a cobblestone path that was hopelessly overgrown, twisting down into the forest and away towards the gurgling sound of a waterfall nearby.

It was beautiful. She swallowed and wondered where the path led. Aside from the cold, the room smelled clean and fresh and oddly untouched by the animals that had damaged the rest of the building.

There was a mark on the wall near her shoulder, along the open doorway that led to the bedrooms. Inside the family wings, there were few doors except on the actual sleeping rooms. Wolves lived together. She inched closer and smiled to find a faded, almost indistinct growth chart cut into the wood of the doorway. The names were almost impossible to read, except for the shortest.

_Davey is FIVE!_

Her surprised laugh was cut off by twin howls from outside and a shrill, excited, _Mama, a **bear!** _ from Riley. She ran. Leapt out of the open wall and sprinting around the building, hurtling towards her pups. They weren’t where she’d left them. Her heart paused and thumped.

She roared _Riley!_ and heard an answering, _here, Mama,_ from Oliver down the slope. _Quick, Rilly got the bear!_ She couldn’t _smell_ bear, but that didn’t mean anything. Her last encounter with a bear thick in her mind, she raced down the slope and found her pups barking furiously, scanning them both for injury before turning with a ferocious snarl on the—

Racoon.

_I got the bear, Mama!_ Riley crowed, dancing about as the racoon stared nonplussed at her. _Gonna eat it, grr rrr._

_Grrrr,_ Oliver added bravely. _What a silly bear!_

Emily sighed. _Good job,_ she said, grabbing Riley’s tail and tugging her back gently from the irate racoon male. _You fought the bear. What a valiant thing you are!_

_Yay!_ the kids cheered. _No bears here! No bears, no bears!_

The racoon shot Emily a filthy look and waddled away, clearly not keen on joining in. Grinning, Emily led her pups back to the cabin over the ridge, her mind still focused on the hall behind and those sprawling, unbroken views…

 

* * *

 

She dreamed of the hall. She dreamed of walking through rooms that were clean and bright; she dreamed of the gardens as they had used to be. During her waking hours, she floated around doing very little at all and feeling the restlessness creeping back, steadfastly not looking to the ridge beyond the lake and what lay over that crown of rock.

And then she went back.

“Why we at the yuck house?” Riley asked, stacking rocks into a pile for Oliver to knock over with his paws. Emily paced, human and dressed warmly, along the wall of the mostly undamaged room, studying the folded wall. “I’m bored.”

“Aroo,” Oliver yawned, flopping onto his side and flicking his ears. They watched Emily.

“I think,” said Emily, tilting her head and thinking hard, “that perhaps we can make the yuck house… slightly _less_ yuck.” Riley just shot her an incredulous look, tugging grumpily at her own thick parka and beginning to try to work her shoes off her feet.

_Just to keep occupied,_ Emily told herself, walking the kids over to the overgrown drive and dragging some logs from the gates. _That’s all. Just for something to do._ She continued telling herself this as she cleared shrubs and overhangs from the drive, revealing a rough gravel path, and kept this up all the way down to the narrow service road down the hill. And she continued telling herself this as she buckled the kids into the car and drove them down to the nearby town, Luray, and found her way to the hardware store.

“Need help?” asked the salesperson, eyeing her and then dropping his gaze to Riley smiling sweetly by her side and Oliver gnawing on his foot.

“Uh,” she said, pausing. What was she doing? It wasn’t her house, or something she knew anything about, it wasn’t… “Wood. I need… uh, plywood.”

“Plywood,” he repeated. Emily swallowed. Out of her depth. “…Yes.”

Emily blinked. What else? What was she _doing_?

“Two seconds,” she said, and walked out, fumbling for her phone. He answered on the second ring.

“Rossi. What’s up, love?”

“Hey, Dave.” And here, she hesitated again. “Uh. Want to help me build a house?”

 

* * *

 

“Big job for one wolf,” Dave had commented quietly, one eyebrow popped, and then he’d given her the deed and organized for a proper driveway to be built and a dumpster to be delivered.

As the cement set for the foundation of the driveway, Morgan rocked up.

“Had a week of holiday time saved up anyway,” he commented oddly, and then began unpacking a pick-up truck that Emily hadn’t even known the man _owned_. But here he was, and here were tools and here was a delivery of wood that she hadn’t organized, and here was Morgan setting up a pop-up tent in the gardens and winking at her when she asked him wryly if he even knew how to camp.

And, most of all, here was him showing her how to patch holes in the ceiling and roof with nothing more than some plywood, nails, and some buckets to catch any remaining leaks. He was another pair of eyes and hands to keep Riley and Oliver out of the unsecured sections of the house. Then he’d told them to drive down to the town for lunch and when she returned she found that he’d gone through the entire house and temporarily nailed closed every door that could lead to a puppy tumbling through a rotted hole into the water-filled cellar or into an exposed wall of rat-eaten wiring and nails. He brought a generator and freestanding construction lights and showed her how to use both safely. In the quiet as they worked together to nail tarps over windows and plywood over the holes in the walls, Emily asked him how the hell he had all this stuff, entirely unsure of how to act around this man who was, almost entirely, a stranger to her. And not even one she _liked_.

“I renovate houses,” he said quietly. “It’s good, doing something with my hands, you know? I mean, obviously you know, or you wouldn’t be doing this at all. Seeing something broken become good… it’s a kind of fixing things we don’t get to do at work. There, we’re always there after the thing has been broken.”

She understood that. Fuck, did she understand that.

She bought a battery run stereo and they started clearing the lower floor out, room by room, beginning with the rotted staircase. It wasn’t like it was doing anything, just sagging there, and at least then they didn’t have to worry about the pups hurtling down it. And, in the days, that followed, she found something she hadn’t had in a long time. Singing quietly to the music, or talking about nothing important while their hands were busy dragging rubbish out to the dumpster, or taking a break so that Morgan and the kids could play on the lawn…

She found a kind of peace, beginning to privately refer to this place as _her_ sanctuary.

Morgan left and what he left behind was more than had been there before. They’d fixed the folding wall in the living quarters she’d found where Dave had once had his height cut into the wall, closing it neatly and tightly against the weather. They worked to clean and clear the fireplace and chimney, and Emily had found an old-fashioned fireguard in an antiques store in town. The old carpet was stripped out, the floorboards underneath surprisingly sound, and the broken windows had been covered, the glass swept out, the cobwebs brushed down. The bathroom wasn’t useable, the pipes probably completely fucked, but the kitchen had a wood-stove that was still good and they’d found a working well outside that Dave had had a water-inspector come and check the quality of, confirming it was usable.

“There’s no asbestos that I can see anywhere,” Morgan had stated as he’d packed his car and left her all the tools she needed, “but if you’re going to stay in those rooms, I really recommend waiting until after you’ve gotten some paint stripper and sandpaper on the walls and skirtings. That’s very likely lead-based paint—you don’t want the kids chewing on it.”

“Thanks… Derek,” she’d replied awkwardly, and then surprised them both. She’d hugged him. “It means a lot.”

“It’s no problem, Em,” he replied softly, something she didn’t recognise crossing his features. “Anything for the Pretty Boy’s family… I can’t say I don’t blame you really, coming out here and away from it all. I think I’d do the same if… well, I don’t blame you. Nightmares can be hard to run from.”

She smiled tightly and watched him leave, something warm and lasting in her chest.

She had a chance to discover how tedious it was heating bathwater she’d drawn from the well herself in the kettle on the wood-stove when Riley, having internalized her fight against ‘the bears that want to eat Olly’, found herself another bear. Emily, who was busy stripping any lead-paint from the rooms that was at chewing height, rolled her eyes and ignored the now familiar twin howls. It was probably the same racoon they’d found before, or the family of squirrels they’d taken to tormenting, or—

“Uh oh, Mama,” said Riley, leaning through the folded wall that was partially open so Emily could keep an eye on her children. Emily’s nose twitched. And again. “Oliver got yucked by the bear.”

“Oh no,” said Emily, and turned as Oliver ran up, howling miserably and covered in skunk spray. “Oh _no_ , Oliver.”

“My hands are yuck too,” Riley said sadly.

The grocer only laughed at Emily and her tomato juice, and Emily wanted to do anything _but_ laugh about seven well-trips later as she scrubbed at the still stinky children.

“Oh dear,” said a familiar voice, and she turned to find Spencer reaffixing his clothes and pulling a horrified face at the smell. “Riley or Oliver?”

“Both,” Emily said, standing and fighting the urge to run and hug him with her soapy hands. “Well, genius, how do we de-skunk our offspring?”

He vanished, returning an hour later with hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, and dish soap, still grinning. To twin cries of _Daddy!,_ he got to work, until they finally had some _somewhat_ less gross family members.

“This is a huge job,” he commented after, rubbing a towel over Riley’s hair as she dozed in his lap. Emily, sniffing at Oliver’s fur, nodded. They were sitting in the living room of the family wing she’d unofficially adopted, looking out at the dusk-touched trees turning a hazy purple. “We need to get this place checked for termites, the wiring inspected, probably replaced… the pipes would need replacing as well. Plus, the plaster is probably in a shocking state, and likely _all_ the insulation will need to be redone. Is this really what you need?”

Emily looked up at him, mouth twitching. He was watching her, eyes soft. “You said ‘we’,” she replied in lieu of answering. “Do you mean that?”

He shrugged. “I’m not much for handiwork, but I’m apparently a fast learner.”

She laughed, and saw his eyes widen slightly at the sound of her easy relaxation. “Nope, it’s not going to be easy at all, no-sir-re,” she said with another laugh, shuffling closer to him and leaning on his shoulder. Oliver shifted in her arms, becoming a boy reaching for his daddy with a shy smile and chubby hands.

“Who’h…’h… who Sirrie?” he lisped, hazel eyes wide.

“You are,” Riley responded, quick as a whip.

His mouth dropped open into a shocked _O_ , his eyes welling up. “No, no, I’n _Onivah_!” he gasped, and burst into tears as Emily laughed helplessly, and tearfully managed, “Yes, you’re definitely _Onivah_ , Oliver.”

Spencer scolded her for laughing, but she couldn’t stop. Eventually, they joined in.

They didn’t replace the wallpaper, deciding to paint instead. With Dave and Morgan’s help, the place was termite treated and an electrician came and removed the wiring purely to the singular wing of rooms they were living in, replacing it for them. The pipes were a lost cause for now, but the power was reconnected to their little corner of the crumbling house.

“Walls on the north side are sound,” Morgan told them, so they taught the kids to paint their small section of rooms. Floors polished, walls—mostly—painted, floors also partially painted, JJ arrived with rugs and Garcia appeared with a truly terrifying amount of decorations and toys.

Aaron arrived with Jack, who vanished with the two kids, and enough food to last them partway through winter. “Gifts from the pack,” he told her quietly, examining where Oliver had been practising finger-painting his name into the spare bedroom floorboards. “You also have a considerable amount of money coming your way—both from a fund set up to help the wolves from the compound relocate if need be into new homes, and also from the Bureau due to damages suffered during the course of duty.”

Emily ignored that for now as unimportant. “You look tired,” she told him, murmuring as to not disturb Spencer, who was showing JJ the speech therapy he and Oliver had been working on together. “Have you been sleeping?”

“A little,” Aaron replied. “I’ve quit the Bureau, permanently. Gideon and Dave are heading the unit now. I’m working as a lawyer again—many therian pack and herd leaders are looking to appeal the Pack Zoning laws. They’re claiming it’s a fundamental therian right to live in communities of their choosing. I’m inclined to agree. Without the fracturing of our lifestyles that the Zoning Laws created, Lionel would never have gotten the foothold that he did, or kidnapped as many wolves before we became aware of his actions.”

Emily’s breath caught. He hadn’t lied to her, that day on the lake. He was truly a different man.

“That’s incredible, Aaron,” she said, and meant it. A small part of her grieved that she’d never run by his side as his agent again, but that part was quiet and a long-time ago. “Make sure you find time for us though… your pack. Jack needs his family.” They looked outside to where Jack was chasing Riley around, laughing giddily.

“Always,” Aaron said.

Spencer was there for this and he was there when they moved from the cabin to the rooms, and he was there to help her move their new furniture in, what little of it they bothered with. Beds for the pups, who never used them anyway, and a bed for her that was usually filled with the pups. Spencer slept on a camp mattress in the kids’ room, when he slept at all. More often than not, he’d vanish suddenly for half a day or night, and then return muddy and quiet hours later. She never asked where he went, and he never offered the information.

He came out one morning, yawning sleepily with his hair still grey-dusted from sanding the night before, sun-yellow paint dried on his cheeks, and she stopped scrambling eggs for the children and stared at him, her heart beating quickly and unsure in this moment.

“We should really look at the pipes,” he mumbled sleepily, “I miss coffee.”

“We should clean the third bedroom today,” she blurted out. He blinked. “For… you. For you, to stay in, if you want.”

He blinked again. “I’d like that,” he said finally, kissing Riley good-morning, and smiled.

Later that day, Oliver found his first ‘sticky-bear’. As Spencer held him—closing his eyes so he didn’t have to look and wincing with every pained yelp—and Emily patiently plucked the porcupine spines from Oliver’s muzzle and paws, Spencer lectured endlessly about the ‘bears of the woods that you should not and will not touch’.

This, Emily thought privately, was home. Just the four of them, and their pack not so far away.

It could truly be home.

 

* * *

 

Spencer vanished for a bit, citing family reasons, and when he returned, it was with a quiet air, two plane tickets, and the announcement that Elizabeth had been successful… the Efisga borders were now open to all therians and their descendants. Both ways.

“We’ll have to leave the pups with Aaron or Dave,” he said quietly, and Emily felt like her heart would stop with the thought. She faced him off, aware that her eyes were wide and that her scent was pure fear.

But then he told her where he’d been and where they were going.

“Ethan found it,” he told her, holding her close until her trembling stopped. “And… and I think we _need_ to go.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here, with the hall that was slowly becoming a home and with her family surrounding her. She didn’t want _Spencer_ to go, so utterly terrified of what had failed to kill them before somehow managing to finish the job. But she was still, deep down, Emily Prentiss. And Emily Prentiss didn’t let something like bad dreams stop her from living.

So, she went.

The plane ride was silent. They hugged their children goodbye as all of them cried and tried to pretend they weren’t panicked. Aaron held Riley and his face was pure heartbreak. On the flight, she clung to Spencer’s hand, he clung to hers, and they huddled together.

In Efisga, they walked together from the plane to where Elizabeth, Ethan, and Quinn waited for them. Small words were exchanged; Emily commented on how tired Quinn looked, Quinn replied with an exhausted smile and a _but you look fantastic, Emily, truly fantastic._ Elizabeth just hugged her and said very little, before hugging Spencer as well.

And then they climbed again into a helicopter, the pilot cheerfully welcoming them as though he didn’t realize what they were flying towards, and they took off again; flying into the heart of Efisga. Below them, forests and prairies just barely slipping into winter stretched. Emily stared and stared and stared until she began to shake again from the memories crowding her, and Quinn huddled close. Across from them, Ethan and Spencer were talking softly, their heads turned together and their shoulders pressed close. Spencer was shivering.

They landed. Emily was numb. Outside, it was midday and there were birds singing and a soft breeze blowing. None of them moved. Not at first.

Quinn took her hand, and pulled her up. “It’s okay,” she said, looking green. “We’re here.”

That wasn’t as comforting as she might have thought. What comfort could a woman who’d seen Emily at her worst offer her? But still, Emily squared her shoulders, took Quinn’s offered arm, and let herself be led from the helicopter and outside into the light. If Spencer followed, she wasn’t aware.

As soon as she hit the ground, she knew this place. She knew it innately. As though in a dream—a dream she’d lived through so, so many times before—she walked down the slope. And just like in her dreams, she tugged her clothes from her body and shifted, feeling familiar shale stone biting into her paws and her stomach growling with a remembered hunger.

Here, the buffalo berry bush. Emily stared at the base, which showed no sign that anything had ever sheltered there. Here, where Spencer had found sap to soothe his son’s wounds. In the distance, a wolf howled. Spencer made a soft noise and stumbled, Ethan pulling him upright.

She became aware of minds joining her as she walked—stumbled—towards a bare riverbank. And here it was, unmarked and unforgotten and…

Bare no longer. Autumn wildflowers covered it in a swathe of gold and orange, the water catching the light and sparkling silver. A deer glanced up and trotted away when it saw her. A buzzard shrieked overhead.

Spencer padded to her side and she shivered at the sight of him in this nightmare place, even though he was whole instead of wounded and slender now instead of starved. His eyes still held that hollow pain as he lowered his head to the ground where she rested, and she tried to remember how to breathe as she waited for him to fall.

He didn’t. But she was. Tearing, shaking, falling, she curled down and gasped for air where there wasn’t any, her vision narrowing to a long-ago time when her daughter had died.

_Spencer!_ she cried, for him then and him now, and; _what’s wrong with me?_

He was there, by her side, strong and powerful and _alive_. _Nothing,_ he answered her sadly, and leaned his muzzle on hers. Their hearts beat, like hers didn’t, and she felt the ground below her paws give a little under their shared weight. _There’s nothing wrong with you, Em. You didn’t get to grieve then—you had to keep us alive. And you did, you did… you were so amazing. But it’s time, Em. It’s time you got to grieve for her._

She shuddered. Took a breath. And said, finally, _For Felicity._

_For Felicity,_ Spencer echoed, and raised his head to howl. A long, slow, drawn out song of loss and love and moving on. After a beat, she joined in. And she sang for the daughter who could sing no longer.

Ethan and Quinn joined. They sang for the girl they’d never know, of loving her despite this. They sang for Spencer and Emily’s pain. They sang of remembering.

Elizabeth joined. She sang of family, always, no matter what.

As the five songs melded together into the one, it became a single word. A single sorrow, always shared, always remembered, but no longer as crushingly strong. Shared by five, it was five times less than it had been. And Emily could breathe.

They sang _goodbye._


	39. Finding Felicity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan and Quinn came back with them to their hall, bringing with them their five children. It was strange, but not unpleasant, to have the place filled with kids laughing and running and playing together. Unlike the children, the adults were silent. Crammed together in the only habitable rooms, Emily didn’t know how to act around either of their guests and Spencer was so busy trying to make everyone happy that he didn’t have time to realize that maybe it… wasn’t possible. Their pasts lingered between them.

Arlo and Riley were thick as thieves and just as naughty as each other. Oliver found a surprising friend in the smallest of Ethan’s daughters, a tiny girl named Calliope with a crooked leg and a limp. The first time Emily stumbled across the two of them, with Imogen hovering just out of arms-reach and listening intently, curled up by Ethan’s knee as he taught them to read, she thought her heart had broken, just a little. There was a look on Ethan’s face, so raw, so open, that she could close her eyes and vividly imagine the man reading to a smaller Spencer with just the same expression.

But they were crammed too tight together and their shared nightmares pressed down on them, and Emily wasn’t the type of personality who dealt well with being tiptoed around. They fought, mostly her and Ethan, with Spencer and Quinn miserably asking them to stop.

“They didn’t hurt us,” Spencer hissed angrily to her that night, pacing her room. He was sleeping in there, the children sharing the single room to the right and Ethan and Quinn in his. “Remember that Emily—Lionel hurt _all_ of us. It wasn’t Ethan’s fault, and it wasn’t Quinn’s. Stop acting like it was.”

“Knowing that isn’t the same as welcoming them into my home,” she snapped, because there was logically knowing that he was right, and then there was flinching every time she saw Quinn walking around the halls of the place Emily called her Sanctuary. A sanctuary no longer, with the nightmares creeping in.

But then came the day she walked outside and found the kids rough-housing with Quinn watching over them. Spencer was god knows where, vanished off to do whatever it was he did when he needed to be alone, and Ethan was watching the workmen installing new pipes to ensure no pups got in their way. Quinn hadn’t seen her, so Emily could watch with impunity. She did, leaning back against the wall and silently hating the woman sitting all tucked up and mousey on the step with a blanket around her shoulders. So small and placid and weak, no wonder Lionel had broken her so—

Emily shuddered, hating the cruel thoughts picking at her brain. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and looked again.

One of the boys kicked his sister, yelling angrily. The girl cried out, shifting into a mottled grey wolf pup and biting her brother, hard. Fighting began, Quinn asking them to stop. They looked at her, narrowed their eyes, and kept fighting. Pushing the boundaries.

“Please, Rowan,” Quinn said, uncertainly, “stop that.”

Rowan just smirked and kept kicking. Quinn swallowed, her mouth turning down and her face flushing red, and Emily had seen that look before: on her own face before breaking down, back in DC when the pups were flouting every shred of patience she had with them, with no end in sight.

“Hey,” Emily barked, striding out. “You lot, separate. Rowan, inside. You can sit quietly until you’ve calmed down. Finley, you sit out here with your mother. And both of you, _apologise.”_

Finley apologised, shifting back and flushing red as she gathered her clothes and redressed, eyes watering because she’d been scolded. Rowan just glowered, dark eyes furious.

“Not my mother,” he replied with a snarl. “I don’t _want_ parents.” And he stormed past, slamming the door behind him. Still, Emily noted smugly, obeying.

Quinn was staring at her shoes. “Thank you,” she mumbled, turning her face away. “We’ll be out of your hair soon, I promise. I just… I’m sorry. I know you hate us being here… hate… us.”

Emily winced. “Not true,” she lied, frowning at the kids until they scampered away and stopped eavesdropping. Oliver looked worried, like he always did when people cried, but Calliope took his hand and led him away. She tried to change the subject; “Rowan is a handful, isn’t he?”

Quinn burst into tears. Emily stared.

“He’s not ours,” Quinn finally managed, curling her hands over her face. “He… he’s a compound pup, his parents… wouldn’t take him. They wouldn’t take him. They said it was w-wrong to raise pups without a pack, they w-were t-too _fucked_ up by Lionel’s _shit_ to… to love their own child.”

Emily stared some more as Quinn’s tears turned angry, a strange look on the mousey woman, and she whirled on Emily with the wolf in her eyes showing.

“How fucked is that?” she snarled, fists balled. “To _abandon_ your child? I mean, I don’t know how to be a _mom_ , I don’t, I’m absolutely terrible—the kids run all over me and they don’t listen and they f-fight and Ethan gets stressed and yells because he doesn’t know how to be a dad, either, and you’re such… such an amazing mom…”

She trailed off, swallowing. Emily… stared some more.

“You’re such an amazing mom,” Quinn continued, softer this time, her shoulders slumped. “I watch you with Riley and Oliver and I… wish I could be the same. But I’ve never been a mom before and suddenly I have four seven-year-olds of my own, plus Rowan, who Ethan couldn’t _bear_ to see put into a care home, and I’m… I’m so lost, Emily. I’m so lost and I hate to say it but Lionel was _right_. We need pack. We need pack and mine hates Ethan and they hate that my sister is dead and his is awful and we’re… alone. Rowan is angry, all the time, Imogen is so scared of _everything_ , Calliope is probably as smart as Ethan and me put together but hasn’t had the chance to expand on it yet and Arlo has such _nauseating_ nightmares… oh, I’m failing _all of them…_ ”

She looked, Emily realized, like Spencer. Spencer before it all, when he was alone and hated just because people didn’t like what he represented. A wolf alone. And she was doing the same. Looking at Quinn, and looking at Ethan, and letting her past cloud her judgement. Hating them for what they represented, not who they were.

“Stay with us,” she said, and Quinn blinked. Looked confused and hopeful and then worried and then confused again, her face flickering through a whole range of emotions before settling on wary. “Stay here, with us. All of you. There’s enough room, once we renovate another wing, and we won’t be in each other’s fur… and we can… help.”

“Emily…” Quinn murmured her name, her voice wavering.

“Em,” said Ethan from behind her, his voice shocked and hoarse. “You don’t need to do—”

“Yes, I do,” Emily said firmly, turning to face him. She wasn’t her mother. She refused to run alone. “Spencer needs his family, and you need your brother. Pack is pack, Ethan, and we all need to relearn that. _Properly_. Not like Lionel. Besides…” She paused, shivering as a cold breeze blew. “Winter can be lonely. Trust me. It would be nice to not spend another one alone.”

After a long, silent moment, Ethan nodded.

That night, she was awake and staring out the newly-fitted window, curled up tight with her blanket around her but still feeling cold. The door opened, Spencer slipping in and pushing it shut.

He locked it behind him.

She looked at him. He didn’t say anything, just walked to her bed and sat on the edge, curling back against her body when she opened the blanket to let him in. They lay together, warm and quiet with their hearts beating loudly and the room silent except for the sound of their breathing, until Spencer rasped out, “I don’t want a relationship, Em.”

She jolted, perplexed. “Okay? Where did that come from?”

He turned his head, his eyes catching a glint of light from the moon outside and his heartbeat quickening, skin feeling clammy to her touch as she ran her hand along his bare arm. “I…” he began, and stopped. “You asked Ethan and Quinn to live, here, with us… I didn’t expect you to… I was surprised. And happy. So happy.” He nuzzled closer, his mouth still turned down in a confused line. “Thank you. I… I miss him. Them. And I think it will be good for us, all of us… but why?”

Not entirely sure how the two things were connected, she shrugged and tread carefully into the conversation. “It felt right,” she replied. “It felt like beating Lionel. Like showing him that we can be more than what he’s made of us. That I’m not out here hiding from the world and where I don’t fit in anymore—I’m making something, fitting in somewhere, still _living_.”

He nodded jerkily. “I thought so,” he murmured, and turned his head to kiss her awkwardly. Stiffly at first, with her unsure as to what he was doing and his lips cold to the touch, but then she relaxed and he leaned into her and they found an uncertain kind of rhythm, her mouth slipping open and his tongue nudging hers. She made a soft _oh_ , without meaning to, and he pulled away sharply and left her cold and flushed and shaken.

Rain began outside, drumming on the windowpane. They watched it for a moment before he wriggled around so he was flush against her from her chest to her legs, stretching out. She nestled close, still unsure where this was going.

“I don’t want a relationship,” he repeated, returning to that thread, but his heart was hammering and he was half-hard against her bare leg. “I… don’t think I can handle one, not like we were. Not that… intense. But… I want _you_. Not to tie you to me, not to bond… just you. And me. Like we are now. Raising our children with space between us to just be _us_ …”

“But sometimes a little more?” she asked him, her hand skimming his abdomen and finding a scar.

“And sometimes a little less,” he whispered, kissing her again. Hot and warm and she wriggled against him and mewled a little as her hips bumped against his. “Not mine, not anymore, Emily… your own wolf, with me by your side.”

“You sell yourself short,” she scolded him, rolling him onto his back and kicking her underwear off, sliding a leg over him and leaning down, finding his mouth. Kissing him until neither could breathe. “You’re just as much your own wolf as I am, Spencer Reid. Don’t make yourself small to make others feel big.”

He grinned up at her, fingers skimming her belly, her thighs. He’d lost his own pants, holding her up with a bony hand on her hip as he slid them down, hard against her and shivering slightly with the moment. She rocked down, canted against him, gasping as he slid between her legs and pressed against her, responding with a flush of wet, warm heat and an answering groan whispering from his lips. The walls were thick, the doors just as solid, but they were careful to be quiet, to be soft in this moment.

“If we’re going to be a pack, we’re going to need a name,” he said, blinking owlishly up at her. She bowed down, running her lips along his throat, along the scars there, reclaiming them. Making him pant and rut against her with pleasure so that he’d remember this moment when he saw them in the mirror, not the moment that had caused them.

“Sanctuary,” she whispered, sinking down onto him without any more fuss, feeling him push and move inside her, feeling him fill her, feeling him rock and throb and come apart under her haunting hands. “It’s our Sanctuary, our own… our pack.”

“God, yes,” he rasped, and kissed her. “Yes.”

He pulled her loose and put her back together that night, moving together until they came apart in each other’s arms, and then they slept. When she woke, he was there beside her, his face young and smooth in sleep without the lines that marred it when he was awake. She watched him, and was thankful for his life, and thankful for his place at her side. Maybe he wouldn’t always be. Maybe one day, someone else would take his place—or her place beside him.

It didn’t matter. For now, they were more, and it was all she really wanted.

 

* * *

 

Winter brought with it real problems. Emily delighted in each and every one. Every broken shutter, every smashed window as a branch flung through it, every flooded gutter; they were reminders that they’d survived and were alive enough to face the mundane.

Ethan had to keep leaving to help with problems resettling many of the compound wolves, those who weren’t taking well to being returned to the society from which they’d been absent for so long. Spencer often went with him. Emily found, now that she had the house and the winter and even Quinn around her, and their collective gaggle of children besides, she didn’t actually mind his absence so much. When he was home, he slept beside her and often their children slept between them, warm and cosy and home.

Oliver still refused to shift unless he had to. Riley was still trying to fight every cat. Spencer occasionally vanished into the woods without a word. Rowan raged and raged and raged against a world he thought hated him, until Emily one day picked up a hammer and told him if he was going to be angry, he may as well be useful about it.

As it turned out, the kid had a knack for carpentry. As it turned out, astoundingly, so did Ethan.

And it was a new beginning for them both.

Imogen was shy and scared until the day she crept up beside Emily, a thumb in her mouth and her other hand coming up to damply grip Emily’s, and she whispered, “Can you teach me?” Emily, who was elbow deep in a cake-mix for the coming solstice—the night that every wolf celebrated as their collective birthday, since seasonal mating meant that they were all born around this time—paused. Elizabeth had assured her baking was easy. Though Emily was finding that it wasn’t quite as easy as promised

But she replied, “I can try,” and tied her apron around the little girl’s waist. They made what was an impressively awful cake, but seeing the smile on Imogen’s face, Emily couldn’t really feel like they’d wasted it.

Ethan’s car broke down on his way out one day, so Emily left Spencer and Quinn with the children and drove down to pick him up and take him into DC. They drove in an awkward silence, right up until they pulled up where he told her to and she followed him inside a worn-down building to find where he’d been going all this time.

Rows of camp-beds and little privacy denoted a homeless shelter, and Emily paused on the threshold as she recognised faces within it. Tired and hungry looking, the wolves barely registered her arrival, turning their backs on Ethan and huddling in tight-knit family groups with their children within them. Ethan, his mouth miserable, continued through and vanished into an office.

“What was that?” she asked him after, waiting in the cold by the car for him to return. The building had smelled like too many sad bodies too close together, and she’d had to flee from the painful memories of where else she’d smelled that scent before.

“Readjusting is hard,” he said quietly. “Not everyone came home to find their Sanctuaries waiting… and I’m failing them. I promised I’d lead them, and this is where I’ve left them. In a hole on the side of DC to rot.” His voice was bitter with hate. She felt for him. It wasn’t like he could lead them openly, not within DC, not until Aaron was successful in his fight to get the Pack Zoning laws annulled… which could take years.

“How many families?” she asked, charging ahead with all the recklessness she’d been born with. Shit, she had seven children now and four damaged adults, what was some more?

“Seven,” he replied shortly, buckling himself in. She nodded.

“Well,” she said. “Guess we better get to work on the other wings them. There’s fifteen all up. Reckon we can get seven of those winter-proofed enough that they’ll suit?”

Ethan stared at her. Then stared some more. The silence grew awkward, until she contemplated leaning over and poking him to see if he was still breathing.

“Em,” he murmured.

“Don’t fucking argue with me, Reid,” she warned him. “I’ve kicked your ass before, and I’ll do it again. Will they suit?”

“You’ll have to register as a pack, officially,” he said, just as stubborn as his brother.

She snapped, “Fine,” but he kept on.

“You’ll be surrounded by people who remind you of the compound.”

“I don’t care.”

“They’re damaged. They have nightmares. They don’t think independently. The children are still adjusting to having families.”

“Good, they’ll fit right in then. We’ll be a Sanctuary for broken toys.” She paused, and grinned. “Reckon they’ll let us register our pack as that? I think it’s got a nice ring to it.”

But he didn’t answer, just lunged forward and hugged her tight, his cheek wet against hers.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, voice thick with tears. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Speechless, she hugged him back.

“Now, go tell them that as soon as we get the oak tree out, they’ve got a home to come to,” she said finally, and he bolted away.

She was worried she’d regret it, but she never did.

 

* * *

 

The first snow came, and they celebrated it.

Together.

Emily slipped out of the dining room to look for Spencer, the room alive with voices and laughter. Familiar faces, and some unfamiliar, surrounded them. In the hall outside, she found Josh lingering. His face, as young as it was, was drawn.

Ella hadn’t survived the compound.

Josh had shown up, the week before, silent and alone. Grief layered his face, lining it, and he stood on the sidelines as their growing pack grew closer.

“Dinner is ready,” she said gently. He looked away. “If you’d like, we can bring a plate to your room.”

“No thank you,” he said finally, his voice raspy from disuse. Emily hurt for him. “I was thinking I should leave…”

Emily could hear JJ laughing as Henry and Jack tried to tell a joke together, Aaron’s deep voice chuckling alongside. Garcia and Morgan and Gideon had all made it out there, despite the fact that they were human. Dave was bellowing drunkenly. Tonight was a night for family, for not being alone. For celebrating life and the coming snow.

Spring pressed down on them and, this year, Emily suspected that there were those of their pack who might answer it. Not for pups—there were none within them who could or would bear any more children—but to recommit to bonds forged between them. She wouldn’t, but she didn’t have to. Her bonds, to Spencer and to her pack, were ironclad. She wondered if Aaron would, if he had a new partner in mind, but she doubted it.

“Run with me,” she asked the lonely wolf, “decide after. No wolf should welcome the snow alone.”

He nodded, and they slipped outside together, into the lightly frosted forest. They didn’t really run, more strolled, under the trees and the clouds and the snowy skies above, both silent but neither uncomfortable. Emily nudged Josh with her shoulder, the grey-furred wolf nudging her back gently. He’d come looking for her, he’d told them, not a pack. She wondered where he’d go if he left.

_I thought you’d come back for us,_ Josh said suddenly, swallowing hard and looking away. _We… we waited. But El lost her pups. And you didn’t come back. And they forced us together the year after and she… died. She died and you still didn’t come back. Not in time…_

Emily didn’t know what to say. _We tried,_ she whispered, hurting for him. She felt him accept that hurt, felt him shudder with it. Felt his pain double. _I’m sorry, Josh. Please… stay. We didn’t come for you then, but we’re here now. And you can have a life here too._

_Maybe…_ he whispered.

They came out suddenly on a well-lined cobbled path. Emily blinked, unsure where they were. She hadn’t ranged here before.

_Where does this go?_ Josh asked, his ears pricking up as he sniffed the air. _I smell your mate._

_We’re not mated,_ Emily said absently, following Spencer’s scent. It was layered, well-lined. He’d walked this path often. Was this where he went—and if so, where did it go? They followed the path as it wound up and along the ridge behind them, until it came out on the falls. And still it went, lining the falls in a damp, moss-streaked line, until it vanished back into a dark cove of trees. Emily padded along it, finding that the path here was so thickly covered by trees that no snow fell, until she found what waited at the end.

Spencer was there, sitting silently with his eyes closed. Wolf-formed and indistinct in the shadowy gloom, he looked unreal for a moment to her adjusting eyes. And then she looked past him, to the river that wound beyond and the quiet view that would, on a bright day, allow sun into the little garden that was planted here.

And there _was_ a garden planted here. Emily blinked, staring around. Wildflowers tumbled. Flowers that she didn’t know the names of grew there in ordered lines that probably, knowing Spencer, meant more than she knew. White asphodel and rosemary and rue…

She walked forward, her breathing slow in what she knew was a hallowed place, and Spencer opened his eyes to watch her. Along the flowerbeds, there was a line of stones. Large ones, small ones, all set carefully and all chipped away at. At the start of the line, they were done with a clumsy hand. As her eyes skimmed across, she could see where his expertise had grown. They were names.

_I asked Ethan to get me the names of every wolf who died at the compound,_ Spencer said quietly. _They’re all there. All but one._ He looked now, to Josh. _I was working on her stone but then you showed up… she was the last, you know. Besides the wolf who died in the raid to free you all, she was the last to fall to them._

Josh was silent. He padded forward, to a bench that was overgrown and mossy, that had clearly been out here long before any of them had, to where a stone sat beside a set of chisels. Emily watched as he looked at the stone that was nothing but the beginnings of a shaped _E_ and a border that could be the suggestion of flowers.

It was an alcove of the fallen. The wolves who’d never made it to this sanctuary, who’d never known there was an end to their nightmare.

_Emily,_ Spencer said, and she turned to face him and what she knew he was going to show her. Because there was one more victim that she hadn’t seen named here yet, one more lost life.

_Oh, Spencer,_ she breathed, because her stone was set by the riverbank, surrounded by flowers. Unlike the others, it wasn’t a river-stone. It was a flat slab of round stone set carefully down where time wouldn’t shift it, even as it grew into the wild surroundings. _It’s beautiful._

**_Felicity_ **

**_We walked across the world without you_ **

**_in order to find the happiness you were named for_ **

**_Goodbye, our Little Paws, we’ll never forget._ **

_I was going to show you,_ he said as she stood beside him, looking down on a grave that didn’t hold their daughter, but held the treasured memory of her instead. _When it was ready._

She pressed against him, helpless and heartbroken and definitely loving, until a soft voice distracted them.

_Can I work on this?_ Josh asked, staring hungrily at Ella’s stone. _I… I think I should stay until hers is done. At least until then._

_Of course,_ Spencer said gently.

Emily suspected that the stone would never truly be done, but she didn’t mind. They’d grieve together. That was the point of their sanctuary, after all.

They walked back, the three of them, through the forest and the snow until they could hear the snow meet beyond them. As they broke from the trees into the silver-bright gleam of light on snow, they found their pack celebrating. Those who could be wolves were, dancing in the snow with flakes in their fur. The humans danced along, rugged up warm but just as wild. On this night, they were all a family, two legs or four.

_We looked for you,_ Aaron said, coming up to meet her. Spencer and Josh slipped away, Josh to Ethan’s side and Spencer to where Jack was teaching their children how to chase the snowflakes. _Em, I’m so proud of you. What you’ve done here, it’s… it’s everything._

She looked at the wolves and the humans together, no lines between them. The snow flurried around. _No,_ she said quietly, and tilted her muzzle to the sky above. _It’s pack._

She howled and her pack howled with her.


	40. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **End**

Sanctuary Hall stood in front of him, yawning above with its mended walls just as strong as if they’d never been mended at all. There were signs of the damage that the abandoned years had left on it—one of the family wings stood vacant and they’d kept the oak tree that had crashed into it. It was now an indoor garden, open to the outside with benches and flowers within. The past accepted into the present and given a home.

Aaron breathed in the clean mountain air and rearranged the backpack he was carrying. Behind him, Jack made a soft noise. Aaron looked at him, smiling. Eleven years old and every bit his mother in his smile and his eyes, Jack grinned back. His own bag hung in his hand, containing everything they’d decided they needed for this.

“Well, old man?” he said cheekily. “Come on. Keep walking.”

Aaron laughed, but a voice interrupted them. They turned, Emily sauntering towards them in jeans and a dirty sweater, her hands covered in soil and her hair tied back. She cocked her head to the side, grinning, the scar on her throat vivid in the light. But she didn’t seem to care.

She was long beyond the past harming her.

“Well, hello you two,” she said with a laugh. Aaron kept walking until he drew up beside her, scanning the grounds. He could see Spencer on the lawn nearby, teaching a lesson outside to the assorted children sitting around him, his arms flailing wildly as he got overexcited about whatever he was working with them on. “You took your time.”

“We had work to do first,” Aaron said quietly, handing her the newspaper he’d carried the whole way here. _Pack Zoning Laws annulled—a new beginning for equal rights._

Emily read it once and then again, before handing it back to him without a word. And no more was said of it; his job was done.

“Welcome home, Aaron,” she said, and led the way to Sanctuary.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited November, 2017.**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Puppy in trouble](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10914153) by [Blackwolfkot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackwolfkot/pseuds/Blackwolfkot)




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